Saudi Arabia says it now ranks third in the world for AI talent growth, and it also places third globally for developing leading AI models.
The claims come from a national study by the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), the government body that leads the country’s data and AI strategy. The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reports that the study tracks progress across seven pillars and 15 sub-pillars. They run from regulation and investment to data governance, human capital, and adoption by government bodies. It arrives in the year the Council of Ministers named 2026 Saudi Arabia’s Year of Artificial Intelligence.
The headline rankings come from three different indexes, not one league table. The talent figure comes from the 2026 Stanford HAI AI Index. When that index was released in April, SPA described the measure as the percentage change in AI talent concentration, and Stanford builds its talent data on LinkedIn’s Economic Graph. Because the measure is a change over time, it doesn’t rank countries by how many AI workers they have.
The model ranking draws on the 2025 Stanford index, where SDAIA puts Saudi Arabia third globally and first in the region. The US and China still dominate model building by a wide margin. According to Middle East AI News, the 2025 index counted 40 notable models from the US vs 15 from China. The third figure, fifth globally for AI sector growth, comes from the 2025 Observer Index, a separate ranking.
The study also points to the hardware behind the push. SPA says domestic data centre capacity grew 115.8% between 2023 and 2025. The Shaheen III supercomputer leads the GCC on the 2026 TOP500 list. The Hexagon Data Center, with 480 MW of capacity, is described as the world’s largest government-owned Tier IV facility.
Inside government, 90% of public entities have an AI strategy, 97% deploy or build AI tools, and 77% enforce formal AI governance. Nearly half (48%) of adopting entities reported efficiency gains above 10%. The study also lists first-place rankings for women’s empowerment in AI, AI security, and digital readiness.
On the talent side, the Kingdom secured 26 awards at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Competition for Youth, and it joined the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence in 2026. Earlier this month, teams built AI prototypes for real industries at the AgentX hackathon in Riyadh, part of a push to match Saudi Arabia AI talent with what employers need.
It’s unclear how many countries each ranking covers.
