Expand North Star 2024 (http://apo-opa.co/4eZYlV6), the world’s largest startup and investment event, is officially underway in the UAE as Sunday saw the entire global startup ecosystem enjoy an action-packed opening day at Dubai Harbour.

Hosted by the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy and organised by Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), Expand North Star takes place from 13-16 October at the Middle East’s biggest superyacht club.

Already the annual go-to showcase for startups, investors, accelerators, and tech enthusiasts to source funding, investment deals, and essential industry updates, Expand North Star 2024 is primed to be the most prominent, dynamic, and influential in its nine-year history.

Seamlessly integrated with GITEX GLOBAL, the event presents an extensive programme and immersive exhibition with over 1,800 exhibiting startups and more than 1,200 investors with assets under management (AUM) exceeding $1 trillion.

Fascinating first day of record-breaking event

Whilst bringing the entire startup ecosystem to the UAE and accelerating the world's most sought-after startups towards rapid growth and development, this year's edition is also the largest and most international to date with over 100 countries participating.

Expand North Star 2024 hosts its biggest-ever European participation with over 1,000 SMEs and more than 450 startups from 35 countries across the continent. Several participated in one of the highlight sessions of “Investor Sunday” at Expand North Star – ‘Connected for Success: The Power of Cross-border Collaboration in Europe’.

Alongside panellists from France, Italy, Poland, and Portugal, Dr. Sebastian Schäfer, CEO of House of Finance & Tech Berlin, discussed the future of funding and investments.

Dr. Schäfer called for newfound cross-continental collaboration between European nations, citing the vast “untapped potential” across the digital space. He said: “As countries, we don’t collaborate. We need real joint value propositions for tangible success and use cases that help us to work together. We have the ingredients needed to compete with the big tech companies from China and the US – but we need novelty ways to utilise advantages, harness talent, and create future unicorn factories. There’s so much untapped potential waiting to be explored.”

Expand North Star 2024 also welcomes a wide variety of new exhibiting companies from Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America alongside many from the Middle East and Africa.

Bringing together 59 leading unicorns with a combined valuation of $400 billion, Expand North Star 2024 fosters startup innovation with the all-new NS scaleups (http://apo-opa.co/3U4Dvfa). This programme has been introduced to forge collaborations, stimulate business growth, and connect late-stage startups with strategic partners, venture capitalists, and clients. The opportunistic unicorn landscape was explored in another of the opening day’s standout sessions – ‘Climate Tech Unicorns: Valuation, Volatility, and Venture Capital’.

During the Sunday afternoon talk, Sean O’Sullivan, Founder of US venture capital firm SOSV – the world’s most active climate tech investor – addressed the opportunities at hand for the climate tech unicorns of tomorrow. He said: “Climate change is an urgent, existential crisis for humanity – and unsustainable, nonsensical business models cannot continue. There are opportunities for tens of thousands of startups to immediately begin solving our problems and reinventing society – becoming profitable over time. Open AI was founded in 2015 and was going nowhere until recently. Now it’s the most valuable company in the world. With perseverance, companies can suddenly be worth hundreds of billions – even trillions – of dollars.”

What to watch out for at Expand North Star 2024?

Throughout its four-day duration, Expand North Star casts a unique and insightful spotlight on the future of money, blockchain, creativity, and the planet through industry-defining events, including GITEX Impact (http://apo-opa.co/4eZh8ji), Fintech Surge (http://apo-opa.co/483f8Ex), Future Blockchain Summit (http://apo-opa.co/4f657c1), and Marketing Mania (http://apo-opa.co/4f032OG).

The inaugural Tech Transfer 3.0 (http://apo-opa.co/402LDAM) converges leading research labs, visionary scientists, engineers, tech experts, and academics to demonstrate innovation from concept to real-world applications. This event welcomes high-tech institutions for the first time – including IE University, University College London (UCL), Johns Hopkins University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The globally acclaimed Supernova Challenge 2.0 (http://apo-opa.co/3BG1JpD) also presents the best startups from Europe, Asia, and Africa, building momentum for the new and eagerly awaited GITEX EUROPE Berlin, GITEX ASIA Singapore, GITEX NIGERIA, and GITEX AFRICA Morocco in 2025. After six months of semi-finals worldwide, nearly 200 selected startups will pitch in the global grand finale for a cash prize pool of $200,000.

In a proactive and engaging way to connect the UAE’s youth with Dubai’s economic agenda, the younger generation will also be in the spotlight through GITEX YouthX Unipreneur (http://apo-opa.co/3U9LEiB) with YouthX Talks and an Educators Innovation Pitch among the schedule highlights.

Expand North Star runs concurrently with GITEX GLOBAL 2024, the world’s largest and best-rated tech and startup event taking place at DWTC from 14-18 October.

For more information, please visit: www.ExpandNorthStar.com.