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ISSUE 17, 21 September 2026
Ai MAJLiS
- UAE
- SAUDI ARABIA
- QATAR
- KUWAIT
- BAHRAIN
- OMAN
Yallah ahlan — welcome back to Ai MAJLiS, Issue #017. This week’s theme is capability. The UAE sent more than 50 Chief AI Officers on a five-day tour of Silicon Valley and Stanford to learn how to actually run half of government on agentic AI. Saudi Arabia quietly passed a milestone that’s easy to undersell — over one million citizens trained through its SAMAI programme, timed to coincide with hosting ministers from more than two dozen countries at the UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of AI in Riyadh. Kuwait, which has had a quiet year on the AI front, picked up a genuine sovereign AI partnership this week. Qatar picked up something even bigger for a country its size: the top spot worldwide for hosting the next generation of mega AI data centres, beating out Texas and the UAE in the process. And in Muscat, the unglamorous but telling number of the week — Oman’s AI sector nearly doubled its company count in a year. Khawa’s hot, let’s get into it.
01
[UAE] - Agentic AI · Government · Talent Exchange
The UAE Sent 50+ Chief AI Officers to Silicon Valley — With a Two-Year Deadline Waiting Back Home
A delegation of more than 50 Chief AI Officers and federal and local government leaders, organised by the UAE’s Artificial Intelligence Office and the Dubai Centre for Artificial Intelligence, left this week for a five-day immersion trip across the United States — stops include Dell Technologies, NVIDIA, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, and Stanford University. It’s the delegation’s second international mission. The UAE wants 50% of government sectors running on agentic AI within two years, and this trip is meant to turn boardroom knowledge-sharing into things officials can actually deploy back home.
50+
Chief AI Officers and government leaders on the delegation
5
Days touring top US AI companies and universities
50%
Of government sectors targeted to run on agentic AI within two years
"Our focus is on empowering Chief AI Officers to lead — by expanding their knowledge partnerships, deepening their exposure to advanced models, and translating global expertise into practical government applications."
— HE Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence
Why it matters: This is a government treating AI literacy as infrastructure: it sent the people who actually hold budget and deployment authority to sit with the vendors and researchers building the technology. For companies selling agentic AI tools or services into UAE government, this is the delegation worth paying attention to — it holds both budget and deployment authority.
02
[SAUDI ARABIA] - SAMAI · Workforce Training · AI Ethics
Saudi Arabia Just Trained a Million People in AI — and Made Ethics Part of the Curriculum
The Saudi Data and AI Authority’s SAMAI (“One Million Saudis in AI”) programme has now trained more than one million people — a milestone the Kingdom timed to land the same week it hosted the 4th UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of AI in Riyadh, with more than 25 ministers from around the world in attendance. The training goes beyond technical onboarding: alongside practical AI skills, SAMAI includes modules on bias prevention, data-privacy compliance, and responsible use, with separate tracks for developers and general audiences.
1M+
Saudis trained through the SAMAI programme to date
25+
Ministers attending the UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of AI, Riyadh
"We trained more than that number, and an important part of the training focused on ethical AI, responsible use and data preservation."
— Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, CEO, Capacity Building, Saudi Data and AI Authority
Why it matters: A million trained citizens is a genuine labour-market signal: it means a much larger pool of AI-literate hires for every company operating in the Kingdom. Pairing it with a global ethics forum the same week also tells foreign partners something: Saudi Arabia wants a role in setting the rules for AI, alongside adopting it quickly.
03
[KUWAIT] - Sovereign AI · Enterprise Partnership · Government
Kuwait Gets a Real Sovereign AI Partnership — and It's Built on a Local Handshake
Open Innovation AI and Kuwaiti firm Dhow Engineering, part of Dhow International Holding, announced a strategic partnership this week aimed squarely at government entities and critical national-sector enterprises that need AI workloads to stay under national control. Open Innovation AI brings its hardware-agnostic “AI Fabric” platform — covering private assistants, document intelligence, and analytics — while Dhow Engineering handles the local integration: customer engagement, deployment coordination, and implementation on the ground.
"Kuwait has the ambition, institutional strength and strategic vision to become a leading market for sovereign AI."
— Dr Abed Benaichouche, CEO, Open Innovation AI
Joe Chidiac, Group CEO of Dhow International Holding, called it “an important step in expanding the AI capabilities available to organizations in Kuwait” — notable framing for a market that hasn’t had a headline AI infrastructure deal in some time.
04
[QATAR] - Data Centres · Infrastructure Ranking · Compute
Qatar Just Beat Texas, Iowa, and the UAE in the Race to Host the World's Next Mega AI Campuses
The Compute Institute’s Jurisdiction Competitiveness Index — which ranks locations worldwide on their readiness to host large-scale AI computing campuses of 100 megawatts or more — placed Qatar first among 39 jurisdictions assessed globally, ahead of Iowa, Indiana, Texas, and the UAE. Qatar landed in the index’s “Tier 1 — Advantaged” category with a positive outlook, scoring strongly on stability and execution risk, power cost, capital and ecosystem depth, and fiscal incentives.
#1
Ranking among 39 jurisdictions assessed worldwide
77.4
Score out of 100 — "Tier 1, Advantaged" rating
8.4
Power-cost score out of 10, a key siting factor for AI campuses
Why it matters: This ranking is specifically about where hyperscalers and sovereign-fund-backed operators should physically build their next data-centre campus — a direct signal to the exact investors deciding where hundreds of megawatts of capacity go next. For Qatar, that’s a stronger card to play than any single announcement this year.
05
[OMAN] - Entrepreneurship · Vision 2040 · Digital Economy
Oman's Quiet Number of the Month: Its AI Sector Nearly Doubled in a Year
Figures released earlier this month by Oman’s Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology show the number of registered AI companies in the Sultanate climbing from 22 to 42 over the past year — a 91% jump. It’s a smaller base than its neighbours’, but the growth rate is one of the fastest in the region, and officials point to it as evidence that Vision 2040’s digital-economy push is translating into actual company formation on the ground.
- The Takeaway
Mega data centres and multi-billion-dollar funds get the headlines, but a doubling of active AI companies is the kind of bottom-up signal that’s harder to manufacture — it means real founders are choosing to build companies in Oman itself.
Why it matters: For investors and partners looking past the Gulf’s biggest markets, this is a data point worth watching — a fast-growing, still-small AI ecosystem is often the best entry point before valuations catch up to the hype elsewhere in the region.
GCC AI SNAPSHOT
Where Each Country Stands This Week
Seventeen editions in, and this week is a reminder that the AI story in this region is told through who shows up to learn, who gets trained, and who quietly starts a company. The UAE spent this week sending its own people to learn from the source. Saudi Arabia crossed a training milestone a million people deep. That’s the less photogenic side of “AI strategy,” and it’s arguably the part that actually compounds.
Qatar’s infrastructure ranking and Kuwait’s new partnership show the deal-making side of the region hasn’t slowed down either — and Oman’s numbers are a good reminder that the smaller markets are building real momentum of their own, one company at a time.
That’s Issue #017. Yallah, see you next Sunday. 🫖
