The UAE's governance and investment in AI have created ripe conditions for businesses to make the most of the technology, a report says.
ServiceNow, the enterprise software company, detailed its latest findings about how businesses, organisations and enterprises are using AI in its Enterprise AI Maturity Index.
“The UAE remains one of the world’s most ambitious AI markets and the government’s long-term strategy and regulatory leadership have given organisations a genuine head start,” said Saif Mashat, vice president for the Middle East and Africa at ServiceNow.
Mr Mashat, however, cautioned that it was not enough for entities to simply invest in AI.
"The ones pulling ahead are moving from AI pilots to AI orchestration, connecting legacy systems, data, governance and AI agents in one control tower," he added.
The ServiceNow analysis showed that the UAE made a 13-point improvement on its AI maturity score.
"The research shows many organisations are still trying to layer AI on to fragmented technology environments, disconnected data and siloed workflows," a highlighted version of the analysis read.
Agentic AI, often defined as AI tools that can act to help humans with repetitive tasks, continues to be the talk of the technology world, is still a work in progress for many businesses.
"Currently, more than half, 57 per cent, of UAE organisations have implemented agentic AI, but only 7 per cent have used it to build autonomous workflows," the report continued.
Mr Mashat said that because the UAE government "has already created many of the conditions for AI leadership", it was now largely up to companies to make sure they go beyond merely investing in the technology.
"The challenge for enterprises now is to bring that same discipline and consistency into their own organisations," he said.
In terms of investment, the ServiceNow survey showed that the UAE continues to be optimistic about AI.
"UAE organisations expect AI to account for almost one fifth of total information technology budgets by 2027," the report read.
For more than a decade, the UAE has pushed to be an AI leader as it diversifies its economy away from hydrocarbons.
The country’s affinity for research into the technology has resulted in the establishment of start-ups, partnerships and investments from industry leaders including Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI.
The UAE has also teamed up with the US to develop an AI campus, which will include 5GW of capacity for AI data centres, in Abu Dhabi.
ServiceNow said that its 2026 Enterprise AI Maturity Index was compiled by ThoughtLab, and involved surveying about 4,500 executives and 2,000 employees around the world.
Broadly, among the 19 countries where people were surveyed, there were recurring themes that emerged where many organisations were just starting to scratch the surface of how AI could affect day-to-day operations.
Fifty-nine per cent of those organisations, according to ServiceNow, had the ability to to use Agentic AI but only 9 per cent "have made significant progress using agentic AI to create autonomous, multistep workflows".
The report also found that France showed more resistance to AI than other countries, and employees in Saudi Arabia tended to be more resistant to the technology "due to more rigid, risk-averse workplaces, compounded by siloed data and overlapping tools".
