Saudi Arabia was ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa for the Government AI Readiness Index 2025, prepared by Oxford Insights.
The index is among the most prominent indices in the world that are used in decision-making and regulatory planning in the field of artificial intelligence.
The rating indicates that the Kingdom remains on a speedy track towards the implementation and creation of AI applications at the governmental level in a sustainable way.
The index measures the capacity of governments to use and implement AI in public policy and government services, and evaluates 195 governments across the world in terms of criteria related to governance, infrastructure, and institutional readiness.
The outcome highlights the sophistication of the national AI experience in Saudi Arabia and its increasing involvement in advancing the responsible and efficient application of advanced technologies to improve the quality of life, increase the performance of the governmental services, and advance the purposes of Vision 2030.
Saudi Arabia also scored seventh in the world in the governance pillar and ninth in the world in the adoption of the pillar of public-sector, which can be attributed to a balanced development in the regulatory and practical spheres of AI implementation in the government.
The success follows the continued backing of the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) by the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, as well as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of SDAIA, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.
Such support helps SDAIA to develop information and AI, offer data-related functionality and vision, empowering it with further innovation of AI and making the Kingdom a leader among data- and AI-based economies.
Therefore, the report identifies a notable achievement in Saudi Arabia in some of its main pillars. These are AI infrastructure and are backed by the best national platforms, including HUMAIN, which is used to improve computing and AI model generation.
The Kingdom has also gone a mile in AI governance, implementation of smart technologies in the state sector, the formation of national policies, the rapid development and diffusion of AI systems, and the flexibility of acceptance of new technological solutions.
