Hot-button political issues that the White House and tech sector normally grapple with, such as the use of social media by extremists, the desire by law enforcement for a way around encryption, and cyber security, will not be on the agenda.

Obama is using the summit - the seventh in a series which have reached a total of 17,000 people mainly in Muslim-majority countries around the world - to help bolster his foreign policy legacy as his time in offices draws closer to the end on Jan. 20, 2017.

The idea for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit series emerged from a speech Obama made in Cairo in 2009, which he used to signal he wanted to overhaul U.S. policy on the Middle East and try to repair the U.S. relationship with the Muslim world.