Survey on UAE’s AI Adoption and Agentic AI Readiness Aims to Fill a Vital Gap
The inaugural survey by MIT Sloan Management Review Middle East will provide a data-driven view of AI adoption across the UAE's public and private sectors.
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[Image: Nomita Samaiyar/MITSMR Middle East]
How do you know whether your organization’s AI journey is ahead of the curve or falling behind?
Internal metrics can measure progress over time, but they cannot reveal how peers are investing in, governing, or preparing for the next wave of autonomous systems. That requires benchmarking against organizations operating in the same environment.
Recognizing this need, MIT Sloan Management Review Middle East is launching the “UAE AI Adoption and Agentic AI Readiness Survey 2026”—an annual study that measures how organizations across the UAE are adopting AI, preparing for agentic AI, and translating investment into business value.
Every few weeks, a new global report offers fresh insights into artificial intelligence. They track spending, adoption, productivity, and governance across dozens of countries. Yet while these studies reveal broad patterns, they say relatively little about how organizations in the UAE are progressing or what successful AI adoption looks like in the local context.
That is the gap this survey is designed to address.
The UAE has moved quickly to establish itself as one of the region’s leading AI economies. Organizations across sectors are investing in AI, building data platforms, experimenting with generative AI, and beginning to explore agentic systems. But despite this momentum, there remains no widely adopted benchmark that allows organizations to assess their AI maturity against peers operating in the same market.
Rather than asking whether organizations use AI, the survey examines how deeply AI has been embedded into business operations, how governance is evolving alongside deployment, where investment priorities lie, how organizations are preparing for agentic AI, and how business value is being measured.
The timing is significant. Much of the conversation around AI has focused on capability: which models organizations use, how many pilots they have launched, or how quickly they intend to scale. Increasingly, however, the questions facing executives are less about experimentation and more about execution. How should AI investments be prioritized? What governance structures are proving effective? How prepared is the workforce for increasingly autonomous systems? And how are organizations determining whether AI is delivering meaningful business value?
These are management questions as much as technology questions. These are also questions that cannot be answered solely through internal dashboards.
The study is intended for senior leaders responsible for AI, technology, digital transformation, data, innovation, and business strategy across the public and private sectors. Findings will be published in the UAE AI Adoption and Agentic AI Readiness Report 2026, and released at AI Research Forum being held on October 22 in Dubai. Offering participants early access to benchmark insights before public release.
As the inaugural benchmarking study by MIT Sloan Management Review Middle East dedicated to enterprise AI adoption and agentic AI readiness in the UAE, the initiative aims to provide organizations with a clearer understanding of where they stand today and the capabilities they will need to build for the years ahead.
If you’re a senior business or technology leader shaping your organization’s AI strategy, we invite you to contribute your perspective.
The survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Individual responses will remain strictly confidential and will be reported only in aggregated form. Take the survey and help establish the benchmark for enterprise AI adoption and Agentic AI readiness in the UAE.
Click here to participate in the survey.
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The findings of the survey would be shared at the second edition of the AI Research Forum on 22 October 2026 in Dubai.
To partner, speak, or attend AIRF, click here.
