On 10 March 2026 the Saudi cabinet approved designating 2026 the Year of Artificial Intelligence. The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) leads it.
What was announced
- Saudi Arabia ranked 14th in the 2025 Global AI Index.
- More than 11,000 specialists have been trained, and the SAMAI programme has reached over a million participants.
- The Hexagon government data centre is described at 480MW.
Our take
A national year of AI usually means a busy year of public-sector projects. The emphasis on training is the part we'd watch: AI tools only pay off when the people using them know what to trust and what to check.