Saudi Arabia’s Data and AI Authority says the country is expanding AI infrastructure, training and public-sector use, with domestic data-centre capacity growing 115.8% between 2023 and 2025. A new report also says 97% of public entities are deploying or building AI tools, putting concrete figures behind the kingdom’s AI ambitions.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The Saudi Gazette reports that the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) has published a review of the kingdom’s AI progress across areas including infrastructure, data, talent, research and government adoption. The figures below are claims from that review, as reported by the newspaper, rather than independently established rankings or outcomes.
The report says Saudi Arabia ranked third globally for AI talent growth in the 2026 Stanford HAI Index, and third globally and first regionally for development of leading AI models under the 2025 index. It also reports 115.8% growth in domestic data-centre capacity between 2023 and 2025, and says the National Data Lake held 5.87 petabytes of data from more than 90 government entities in 2026.
On government use, SDAIA’s review says 97% of public entities are deploying or building AI tools, while 90% have an AI strategy. Nearly half of entities adopting AI reported internal efficiency gains above 10%, according to the report.
Why it matters
These figures sketch a national AI programme with more than one moving part: computing capacity, data, skilled workers and adoption inside government. The public-sector numbers are especially useful because they distinguish having a strategy from actually deploying or building tools, even if the report does not establish how effective those tools are.
Our read
This is a substantial set of indicators, not a single trophy ranking. The most interesting question is whether the infrastructure and adoption figures turn into durable research, useful services and measurable improvements. A large data centre is an impressive asset; what it enables is the harder test.
What to watch
- Whether later reporting provides independent comparisons for the rankings and infrastructure figures.
- Whether government AI deployments produce measurable benefits beyond the figures in SDAIA’s review.
- How the reported growth in compute, data and AI talent develops in future assessments.
Discussion spark: Which is the stronger sign of a country’s AI progress: expanding infrastructure and talent, or evidence that deployed systems deliver measurable public benefits?
Sources and evidence
- Saudi Arabia among world’s top 3 in AI talent growth and model development – Latest News from Saudi Arabia and the World (11 November 2026, 15:30 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.