Saudi Arabia ranks third globally in AI talent growth: SDAIA report

The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) has released a study titled "The State of Artificial Intelligence in the Kingdom," outlining Saudi Arabia’s progress in the field across seven main pillars and 15 sub-pillars. These include policies and regulations, investment, infrastructure, data, talent, research and innovation, and institutional readiness.

According to the study, Saudi Arabia ranked third globally in the growth rate of AI talent, based on the Stanford Index for 2026. The Kingdom also placed third worldwide and first in the Arab region for developing leading AI models in 2025, and fifth globally and first in the Arab world for sector growth, according to The Observer Index for 2025. Saudi Arabia secured first place globally after winning 26 awards at the 2025 Global Youth AI Competition and joined the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) in 2026.

In terms of infrastructure, the capacity of data centers in the Kingdom increased by 115.8% between 2023 and 2025. The Shaheen 3 supercomputer led the GCC in the TOP500 list for 2026. The Hexagon Data Center now boasts the world’s largest government capacity at 480 megawatts, and there are nine cloud regions as of mid-2026, with four still under construction.

On the data front, more than 515 government systems have been integrated into the National Data Lake, which now exceeds 5.87 petabytes. In 2026, 346 entities published over 21,800 open data sets. Over 500 billion Arabic data units were used to develop the "Allam" language model in 2025, and the "Falak" platform reached 2.2 billion linguistic and audio words that same year.

The study found that 84% of Saudi residents are familiar with the concept of AI, and 74% understand its applications. More than 1.2 million people benefited from the "Samai" initiative by July 2026. Over 69,300 students graduated in technology fields between 2021 and 2025, with a 15% annual compound growth in talent density.

In research and development, the annual growth rate of specialized scientific publications reached 37.4% between 2021 and 2025, while patents grew by 34.52% between 2020 and 2024. Eight large language models and 58 local applications were developed, along with five leading models according to the Stanford Index for 2025.

For institutional readiness, 90% of government entities have an AI strategy, 97% use or develop AI models and tools, 77% have adopted governance practices, and 63% adhere to official procedures for national principles compliance. Additionally, 48% reported more than a 10% increase in internal operational efficiency.

The study also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s advanced global rankings: sixth in government strategy, seventh in governance, third in policy observatory, and twelfth globally (first regionally) in AI safety. The Kingdom ranked first worldwide for women’s empowerment in the sector, third for the proportion of students using generative AI, and fourth for attracting talent. In development and innovation, Saudi Arabia led globally in security, privacy, encryption, and digital readiness, ranked eighth in citations, and seventh in financial sector funding.

The study is part of SDAIA’s efforts to showcase the Kingdom’s progress in AI and to highlight national capabilities in infrastructure, data, talent, research and development, and institutional adoption.