Google has become the latest tech company to withdraw from a major conference in Saudi Arabia following conflicting accounts of the death of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Diane Greene, Google's head of cloud, will no longer attend the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Riyadh, nicknamed "Davos in the Desert".

The event is due to begin on October 23 and is being co-hosted by the country's massive sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF). It is intended to showcase the nation's future modernisation plans in a bid to attract foreign investment.

Google's withdrawal is significant because the firm has sealed deals to build up its cloud internet infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, it also announced that it would work with a Saudi agency to open five innovation hubs to train aspiring technologists.

Those deals, however, may be in jeopardy after prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi policies, went missing.

He was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.