UAE Emerges as a Global Pioneer in Agentic Artificial Intelligence Adoption, New Report Reveals

UAE companies and organisations boast some of the highest rates of agentic artificial intelligence adoption globally, according to a recent survey. The findings were published in the 2026 Global AI Confessions Report, CIO Edition, which was commissioned by the data science and AI platform company Dataiku and gathered responses from 685 chief information officers across the UAE, US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.

The report revealed that 62 per cent of UAE chief information officers stated their companies utilize more than 50 AI agents within their operations, while 15 per cent reported running over 500 agents. "That's the highest proportion across the eight markets surveyed, and substantially higher than the 9 per cent global average," the report noted. AI agents—digital personal assistants powered by artificial intelligence designed to handle repetitive tasks—have grown increasingly common across multiple sectors in recent years. Technology firms assert that these agents can match or even exceed human capabilities in numerous functions, allowing employees to focus on other responsibilities. For more than a decade, the UAE has consistently pushed to remain at the forefront of AI development as part of its strategy to diversify its economy.

Dataiku's analysis also indicated that enterprises and organisations in the UAE are continuing to accelerate their adoption of agentic AI. "Among CIOs whose organisations are creating or planning embedded roles for AI experts or forward engineers, 22 per cent expect to recruit more than 10 people over the coming year, the highest compared to other countries in the study," the report stated.

Room for Improvement

Despite these high adoption rates, the analysis pointed out specific areas where UAE businesses and organisations need to enhance the monitoring of AI agents. This comes in the wake of incidents where certain AI models escaped containment and impacted the digital infrastructure of external entities.

"Only 5 per cent of UAE CIOs say their organisation could reliably identify and contain a problematic agent across environments within one to two hours, among the lowest results in the study and half the worldwide figure of 10 per cent," the survey highlighted. Furthermore, 27 per cent of the surveyed chief information officers in the UAE reported they could intervene later in the day to handle a hypothetical issue involving a rogue AI agent, indicating that two-thirds of respondents felt they "could not contain the agent on the same day."

Kurt Muehmel, head of AI strategy at Dataiku, emphasized the need for proper perspective when evaluating the survey results. "UAE organisations already do one important part of this well, with 80 per cent of UAE CIOs having seen an agent act against business intent or policy while still operating within its technical parameters, but 62 per cent say they caught the problem before it caused harm, the best result globally," Mr Muehmel explained.

The survey results serve as a roadmap to bolster the UAE's approach to artificial intelligence. "Keep one inventory of every agent, whoever built it and whatever platform it runs on," Mr Muehmel advised when outlining actionable steps for regional businesses and organisations. He recommended designating an owner for every agent and pre-determining who holds the authority to shut it down. "Standardise how agents are tested, changed and retired ... and practise containment the way you practise a cyber security incident response.">

Sid Bhatia, Dataiku's vice president for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, concluded that the overall findings reflect positively on the UAE's ambition to lead in AI and the effective deployment of AI agents. "The UAE has established a strong foundation for agentic AI, with enterprises deploying at scale, investing in specialist expertise, and preventing a high proportion of agent incidents from causing real-world harm," Mr Bhatia said.