The future of work is changing fast in the UAE — and some of your next colleagues might not be human. According to the latest AI Readiness Index by Cisco, 92% of organizations in the UAE plan to deploy agentic AI, AI that can act, decide, and execute on its own.
Even more eye-opening: 41% of those organizations expect AI “co‑workers” to be working alongside their teams within the next year.
It is not just about deploying smart chatbots-the UAE is embracing “agentic” systems capable of planning, reasoning, and acting on their own.
What’s Spurring the Rush to AI
Pressure to show results: 86% of companies say they feel more urgency now to demonstrate a return on their AI investment than they did six months ago.
AI is now the top budget priority: Three-quarters of businesses put it high on their IT spending list, and 64% already have a clear AI strategy in place.
Infrastructure upgrades ahead: 51% of firms plan to invest in data center capacity in the next 12 months to handle growing AI workloads.
What These AI Agents Are Already Doing
UAE companies are already leveraging AI in meaningful ways:
Efficiency and Automation: More than one-half are using it for predictive maintenance, automation of processes, supply chain optimization, and energy management.
Tangible business impact: About 69% say AI has boosted their productivity, innovation, or profitability.
Security needs: More than half of the respondents-54%-are highly aware of the AI-driven risk, while 47% are leveraging AI to strengthen cyber threat detection and response.
The Talent Gap that Slows Things Down
It’s not entirely plain sailing: only 38% of companies feel they have enough in-house AI talent to deploy everything they want. These “robot coworkers” will be difficult to scale well without expert staff.
