GCC AI News — 22 Sep 2026

The UAE Cabinet, chaired by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, approved the roles-and-responsibilities framework for federal ministries to deliver the Agentic AI Project - the government's plan to transition at least 50% of federal services and operations to agentic AI within two years. Phase One covers citizens', residents', business and general public services, backed by a skills programme to upskill federal employees. In the same meeting the Cabinet approved a National Policy for Advancing Digital Healthcare Services and AI, built on a national AI-driven medical system, advanced digital-health infrastructure, and equipping the health workforce with AI skills.

Most governments talk about AI; the UAE is committing to rewire how public services actually run, with a deadline. Pairing an agentic-government mandate with a dedicated healthcare-AI policy shows a joined-up push to turn strategy into services citizens use every day.

Residents and businesses can expect faster, more automated government transactions as services move to agentic AI, while healthcare providers gain a clear national framework - covering data governance and ethics - to deploy AI across preventive, curative and operational care.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is accelerating its AI push, deploying 43 AI solutions and automating over 1,500 processes across its ecosystem during 2025, according to a mid-September update. Its AI champion HUMAIN is building next-generation data centres and cloud infrastructure - scaling toward capacity of up to 6 gigawatts - while developing top-tier Arabic large language models and protecting locally developed intellectual property. The strategy, backed by a $3 billion Blackstone investment, spans the full AI value chain from compute to applications. Stanford ranked Saudi Arabia third globally in leading AI model development during 2025.

Building across the whole AI stack - chips, data centres, Arabic models and enterprise tools - is how a country turns oil-era capital into a lasting technology industry. A top-three global ranking signals the Gulf is now a genuine contributor to frontier AI, not just a customer.

Enterprises and developers in the region gain a growing home-grown option for compute and Arabic-first AI, reducing reliance on foreign platforms - and a template for how national investment funds can seed a full domestic AI economy rather than importing one.

The UAE Cabinet approved an AI curriculum for all public and private schools, equipping students with the technical requirements of AI, an awareness of its ethical applications, and an understanding of AI data, algorithms, applications and risks. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said the objective is to train 22,000 teachers and educators to use AI as a support in teaching, assessment, curriculum analysis, lesson planning and fostering innovation among students. A pilot in public schools had already produced positive results, and the UAE is among the first countries to develop integrated AI curricula across all educational levels.

Teaching AI - including its limits and ethics - from an early age builds a generation that can shape the technology rather than just consume it. Investing as heavily in teacher training as in the curriculum is what makes such a rollout actually work in classrooms.

Students across the UAE will learn how AI works, where it fails, and how to use it responsibly, while teachers get structured training - a model any education system can adapt by pairing an AI curriculum with sustained professional development rather than one-off workshops.

Oman's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology held the founding meeting of the Green AI Alliance, in cooperation with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals and the Authority for Public Services Regulation. Participants approved the alliance's founding document, established its technical committee and reviewed a 2026 work plan. Described as the first initiative of its kind in the region, the alliance brings together government, private sector and academia to adopt low-emission AI and energy-efficient high-performance computing, linked directly to Oman Vision 2040's goal of balancing economic development with environmental protection. It sits alongside Oman's Digital Triangle plan for green AI data centres.

AI's fastest-growing cost is power, and its fastest-growing risk is emissions. A national alliance that ties AI growth to renewable energy and efficiency from the start - rather than bolting sustainability on later - is a genuinely forward-looking way to scale the technology.

Companies operating in Oman gain incentives and a framework to run AI workloads on cleaner, more efficient infrastructure - a practical example for any organization of designing AI adoption around energy efficiency instead of treating power use as an afterthought.

Bahrain's Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) to strengthen cooperation and exchange expertise in data and AI. Under the agreement, the two sides will exchange knowledge on data governance and on the infrastructure and technologies that support AI, including large language models, and will collaborate on joint research, prototype development and specialized training programmes. Officials from both authorities said the partnership reflects longstanding ties between the two countries and a shared aim of translating technological capability into practical government services and digital transformation.

Cross-border cooperation lets smaller Gulf states share the cost and talent of building AI capability rather than each starting from zero. Pooling data-governance standards and model expertise raises the whole region's readiness and helps keep Arabic AI development regionally led.

Government teams in both countries can adopt shared best practices for data governance and AI deployment, and the joint training programmes build a regional talent pool - a reminder that partnerships, not just spending, are how national AI capability compounds.

M42, the Abu Dhabi-based health company powered by AI, technology and genomics, announced plans to adopt Oracle Health Data Intelligence to unify clinical, genomic and real-world data across its network, advancing chronic-disease management, population-health programmes and precision care. M42 said it will initially deploy the platform within its diabetes programmes, enabling proactive patient engagement and care optimisation to improve long-term outcomes for people living with chronic conditions. Executives framed the move as bringing clinical, genomic and real-world data into one secure, intelligent environment for faster discovery and more personalised care, strengthening the UAE's position as a hub for AI-enabled healthcare.

AI in medicine only works when the underlying data is unified and trustworthy. Bringing clinical, genomic and real-world data together is the unglamorous groundwork that lets AI actually predict risk and personalise treatment - especially for chronic diseases like diabetes.

Patients with chronic conditions can benefit from earlier, more tailored interventions as AI draws on a fuller picture of their health - and health systems everywhere see how consolidating fragmented data is the prerequisite, not an afterthought, for useful medical AI.

Ten innovative projects using AI to address healthcare challenges were honoured at the AI Builders Summit 2026 in Abu Dhabi, developed by students from universities and institutions across the UAE. The projects focused on improving the patient journey, accelerating medical referrals, organising health records and helping healthcare professionals make more accurate, efficient decisions. Salman Waleed Alshehhi of UAE University won the Most Scalable Concept award for CareRoute AI, an intelligent referral assistant that recommends the right specialist and tracks referrals to completion. The summit, hosted by Burjeel Holdings' AiMed Solutions with Burjeel Training Academy, drew more than 100 young innovators, with 19 finalists reaching a live Demo Day.

Nurturing home-grown talent to solve local healthcare problems is how a country turns AI ambition into lasting capability. Students building deployable tools - not just demos - is exactly the pipeline that keeps AI innovation rooted in the region.

Hospitals can look to student projects like an AI referral assistant for practical, low-cost fixes to everyday bottlenecks - and educators everywhere see the value of challenge-based summits that push young builders to ship real, problem-focused AI solutions.

Open Innovation AI and Dhow Engineering, part of Dhow International Holding, formed a strategic partnership to accelerate sovereign AI adoption in Kuwait, targeting government entities and enterprises in critical national sectors that need to run AI workloads under national control. Open Innovation AI's hardware-agnostic platform orchestrates AI across on-premises, private-cloud and hybrid environments with governance and access controls at the platform layer, supporting private AI assistants, document intelligence, analytics and model hosting. Dhow Engineering will act as the local integration and delivery partner, coordinating deployments with Kuwaiti data centres and enterprises while keeping data residency, cybersecurity and governance under sovereign control.

For governments handling sensitive citizen and infrastructure data, where AI runs and who controls it matters as much as how capable it is. A sovereign-AI approach lets Kuwait adopt powerful tools while keeping data and governance firmly at home.

Public bodies and regulated enterprises can deploy private AI assistants and document intelligence without sending sensitive data to external clouds - a blueprint for any organization that needs AI's benefits under strict data-residency and governance requirements.

Qatar Chamber and UNESCO discussed expanding cooperation on innovation, technology and AI ethics, in talks held alongside the fourth Global Forum on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Riyadh (September 14-17). The discussions examined how international standards and principles could support responsible AI adoption across private-sector institutions, covering AI governance, ethics training, knowledge exchange and joint initiatives for businesses, SMEs and startups. The two sides are continuing technical discussions to define areas of cooperation and implementation mechanisms before signing a memorandum, placing AI governance alongside business innovation as Qatar's private sector expands its use of emerging technologies.

As businesses race to adopt AI, clear ethics and governance standards are what keep that adoption trustworthy. Pairing a national chamber of commerce with UNESCO's ethics expertise helps SMEs - not just big firms - adopt AI responsibly from the start.

Companies and startups in Qatar stand to gain practical governance and ethics training as the cooperation develops - and business bodies elsewhere can follow the model of teaming with standards organisations to help smaller firms adopt AI safely.

The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, with the Department of Government Enablement, began implementing its AI Judicial Platform, described as the world's first integrated system of its kind, with the first phase starting in September and a phased 18-month rollout. The platform is designed to support judicial and legal decision-making through AI under full human supervision and validation, applied across the full judicial workflow to improve procedural efficiency while ensuring accuracy and consistency. Officials stressed that AI supports - rather than replaces - human rulings, framing the project as a way to speed case completion and modernise judicial operations to international standards.

Courts are cautious adopters of AI for good reason, since errors carry legal consequences. Abu Dhabi's deliberate framing - AI as support under full human supervision, never automated judgment - is a careful, watchable model for using AI in high-stakes public services.

Litigants can expect faster, more consistent case handling as routine judicial steps are streamlined, while human judges retain final authority - a template other jurisdictions can study for adding AI to sensitive workflows without removing human accountability.