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Organisations in Saudi Arabia are outperforming global counterparts in AI confidence, investment size, digital maturity, and value realization.
According to KPMG’s Saudi Arabia Tech Report 2026, seventy-six percent of those surveyed believe AI will be implemented on a large scale and provide measurable returns on investment within the next twelve months; this is the highest level of confidence worldwide. The findings indicate a market shifting rapidly from AI experimentation to large-scale use, relying on centralized governance, strong digital foundations, and ongoing high-level investment. The report is based on a global survey of 2,500 technology leaders, including 70 participants from Saudi Arabia.
The new KPMG report puts numbers on something that has been visible anecdotally for some time: Saudi organisations are not just spending money on AI, they have built the governance, infrastructure and execution discipline to deploy it at scale. The finding that 76 percent expect AI to deliver ROI within the next twelve months is striking because it comes from organisations that already have strong cybersecurity maturity, centralised decision-making and evaluation processes. Now that the foundations are in place, the execution is accelerating.
KPMG’s parallel UAE Tech Report 2026 found that 97 percent of UAE organisations are already embedding AI agents into workflows, products, services and value streams, the highest agentic AI integration rate globally. The UAE also records the highest organisational resilience levels of any region surveyed, with 90% placing themselves in the top two resilience tiers. Where the two markets diverge is instructive: Saudi Arabia leads on AI ROI confidence and investment scale, while the UAE leads on depth of agentic AI integration and resilience. Both markets share fast-follower strategies, near-universal long-term technology plans, and digital maturity levels that consistently outpace global benchmarks.
Read the full article for more stats on Middle East AI News.
by Carrington Malin
Carrington Malin is a UAE-based marketing and communications professional, consultant, entrepreneur and writer with many years experience of building brands, driving growth and leading high-performance teams. He has worked with a wide range of high-growth, technology and tech-driven ventures across ecommerce, consumer products, digital services, B2B, media, software, hardware and other sectors. These days he focuses mainly on emerging technology ventures related to artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR), blockchain, drones, Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and smart cities.