Saudi Arabia Ranks Third Globally in AI Talent Growth as Government Adoption Reaches 97%, SDAIA Reports
RIYADH, November 11, Saudi Arabia Breaking News — Saudi Arabia ranked third worldwide in artificial intelligence talent growth, while 97% of government entities have adopted or are developing AI tools, according to a new study released by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA).
The study, covering seven major areas of AI development, also found that the kingdom's data centre capacity increased by 115.8% between 2023 and 2025, reflecting an expansion of the infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Saudi Arabia secured third place globally in AI talent growth in the 2026 Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Index. It also ranked third worldwide and first regionally in the development of leading AI models in the 2025 index, while placing fifth globally in AI sector growth, according to the 2025 Observer Index.
Government adoption figures showed that 90% of public entities have established AI strategies, 77% have formal governance arrangements and 63% comply with SDAIA's national AI principles. Among entities adopting the technology, 48% reported internal operational efficiency improvements exceeding 10%.
The expansion of digital infrastructure has been accompanied by increased national computing and data-processing capacity. The Shaheen III supercomputer ranked first among Gulf Cooperation Council countries on the 2026 TOP500 list, while the Hexagon Data Center has a stated capacity of 480 megawatts.
By mid-2026, Saudi Arabia had nine hyperscale cloud regions, including four under development by international providers.
The study also reported that 515 government systems had been connected to the National Data Lake, bringing together 5.87 petabytes of information from more than 90 government entities. More than 21,800 open datasets were available through contributions from 346 public and private organisations.
In domestic AI development, more than 500 billion Arabic data units were used to train the ALLaM 34B language model in 2025. Saudi Arabia has also developed eight large language models and 58 specialised AI applications, according to figures cited from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
The findings showed that 84% of the Saudi public was familiar with AI concepts, while more than 1.2 million people had participated in the first phase of the SAMAI training initiative by July 2026.
Saudi Arabia recorded a 37.4% compound annual growth rate in AI research publications between 2021 and 2025, while patent filings increased at an annual compound rate of 34.52% between 2020 and 2024.
The report also placed the kingdom first globally in women's empowerment in AI, AI security, privacy and encryption, and digital readiness.
Saudi Arabia joined the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence in 2026, adding to its participation in international AI cooperation initiatives.
Source: Saudi Press Agency (SPA)
