Saudi Arabia ranks third globally in AI talent growth: SDAIA

The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) has released a study on the state of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Kingdom, highlighting the Kingdom's progress in AI across seven areas: policies and regulations, investment, infrastructure, data, talent and human capabilities, research and innovation, and institutional readiness and adoption.

According to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the study showed that Saudi Arabia ranked third globally in AI talent growth, based on the 2026 Stanford HAI Index.

The Kingdom also ranked third globally and first in the Arab world and regionally in the development of leading AI models, according to the institute's 2025 index. It ranked fifth globally and first in the Arab world in AI sector growth, according to The Observer's Global AI Index 2025.

Saudi Arabia ranked first globally after winning 26 awards at the 2025 International Youth AI Competition. It also joined the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) in 2026.

The Kingdom's data center capacity increased by 115.8% between 2023 and 2025, the study showed. Its Shaheen III Supercomputer ranked first among GCC countries in the 2026 TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.

Saudi Arabia is also home to Hexagon, the world's largest government data center, which has a Tier IV classification and a capacity of up to 480 megawatts.

As of mid-2026, the Kingdom had nine cloud regions, including four under construction by global cloud service providers.

The study said data from more than 515 government systems had been integrated into the National Data Lake (NDL), part of the National Data Bank. The volume of hosted data exceeded 5.87 petabytes.

More than 90 government entities provided data in 2026, while 346 public- and private-sector entities published more than 21,800 open datasets.

More than 500 billion Arabic data units were used to develop the ALLaM 34B language model in 2025.

The Falak platform, operated by the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language (KSAA), contained 2.2 billion linguistic and audio words in the same year.

Under the talent and human capabilities pillar, 84% of the population in Saudi Arabia were familiar with AI, while 74% were aware of its practical applications, the study found.

More than 1.2 million people had benefited from the first edition of the SAMAI initiative as of July 2026. More than 69,300 graduates obtained technical degrees in fields including computer science and information technology between 2021 and 2025.

AI talent density in the Saudi labor market grew at a compound annual rate of 15% over the same period.

The number of specialized AI scientific publications increased by an average of 37.4% annually between 2021 and 2025, while patents grew by 34.52% between 2020 and 2024, the study showed.

Eight large language models and 58 AI applications were developed locally, according to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's 2026 annual report. The Stanford HAI Index also credited the Kingdom with developing five leading AI models.

In terms of institutional readiness and adoption, 90% of government entities had an AI strategy and a unified framework to measure the success and impact of their projects.

Meanwhile, 97% of government entities used or developed AI models and tools, while 77% had adopted AI governance practices. Some 63% had formal procedures to ensure compliance with SDAIA's national principles.

About 48% of government entities adopting AI reported an improvement of more than 10% in the efficiency of their internal operations.

The study also highlighted Saudi Arabia's rankings in global indices across four areas.

In the regulatory environment, the Kingdom ranked sixth globally in government strategy, seventh in governance, and third in the AI Policy Observatory. It also ranked 12th globally and first in the Arab world and regionally in AI safety.

In human capital, Saudi Arabia ranked first globally in women's empowerment in AI, third in the share of students using generative AI and fourth in attracting AI talent.

In development and innovation, the Kingdom ranked first globally in AI security, privacy, and encryption, first in digital readiness and eighth in AI-related scientific citations.

Under economic competitiveness, Saudi Arabia ranked seventh globally in financial sector funding. It also recorded strong positions in AI sector growth, the development of leading AI models, and AI talent growth.