Middle East organisations push AI from experimentation to production, Deloitte report finds
Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report signals a turning point for artificial intelligence in the Middle East: companies are moving beyond isolated pilots and increasing sanctioned access to AI tools, but substantial operational and governance gaps threaten to slow the strategic benefits of scaling. The findings, drawn from more than 3,200 business and IT leaders across 24 countries, include regional metrics that mirror global trends while emphasising unique local priorities such as data sovereignty.
What the data shows
According to Deloitte’s regional analysis, enterprise access to approved AI tools in the Middle East has grown sharply over the past year, rising by about 50 percent and bringing sanctioned access to nearly 60 percent of workers. Organisations are also accelerating deployments: more than half expect to move a significant share of experiments into production within months. Yet the shift from productivity gains to business model reinvention remains uneven.
Key regional findings include: 66 percent of organisations report productivity improvements from AI, but only 34 percent say they are using AI to deeply redesign products, processes or business models. Revenue outcomes lag adoption today, with just 20 percent reporting current AI-driven revenue growth even though 74 percent expect such gains in future.
Workforce, governance and infrastructure are the constraints
The report identifies workforce readiness as a principal bottleneck. A large majority of respondents, 84 percent, have not redesigned roles or workflows to reflect AI capabilities. Most organisations remain focused on awareness and literacy rather than on restructuring job designs, career paths and operating models to embed AI-enabled ways of working.
Governance is another critical shortfall. As enterprises contemplate agentic and autonomous systems, only about one in five surveyed claim to have mature governance frameworks for autonomous AI. That gap comes as agentic AI adoption is poised to climb rapidly: today roughly 23 percent use such systems to any significant degree, but nearly three in four expect to deploy them at scale within two years.
Technical and operational readiness also lags strategic ambition. While 42 percent of Middle East respondents rate their AI strategy as well prepared, preparedness declines when it comes to data management, infrastructure modernisation and talent depth, areas companies will need to address to sustain large-scale AI operations.
Sovereign AI and risk considerations
The Deloitte survey highlights a pronounced regional emphasis on where AI technologies are built and hosted. About 77 percent of organisations consider vendor or platform location an important factor, reflecting heightened concerns around data sovereignty, infrastructure dependency and geopolitical risk. That preference for local or regional control aligns with government-led digital strategies in several countries across the Gulf and broader Middle East.
Data privacy and security remain the top AI-related concerns globally, cited by 73 percent of respondents, followed by legal and regulatory compliance, governance oversight and model reliability. With physical AI also gaining traction globally—robotics and autonomous systems use is expected to grow from 58 percent today to roughly 80 percent in two years—organisations face a convergence of digital and operational risks that governance models must address.
Implications for enterprises and policy
The findings suggest a two-track environment in the Middle East. On one track, firms are rapidly increasing sanctioned AI use and preparing to move experiments into production. On the second, many organisations risk remaining trapped in a cycle of pilots if they do not invest in the organisational and technical foundations required for scale.
For corporate leaders, the priorities are clear: align AI pilots to measurable business outcomes, accelerate workforce redesign with new role definitions and reskilling programmes, and strengthen governance covering autonomy, accountability and model risk. Investing in secure, scalable infrastructure and clarifying vendor selection criteria in light of sovereign requirements will be important in markets where national control over data and systems is a strategic priority.
Regulators and policymakers also have a role to play. The rapid emergence of agentic systems and wider adoption of physical AI mean that oversight frameworks need updating to cover operational safety, accountability chains and cross-border data flows, while facilitating innovation that supports local economic agendas.
Outlook
Deloitte’s 2026 assessment frames the Middle East as an active adopter of enterprise AI poised to scale, but it emphasises that strategic value will hinge on non-technical factors: governance, workforce transformation and sovereign controls. Organisations that pair ambition with disciplined investment in these areas are likeliest to convert productivity gains into sustainable competitive advantage.
Read Deloitte’s full State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report here: Deloitte State of AI 2026 (PDF).
