AI: the rise of India and the Gulf States

To offi­cially join the AI race, sev­er­al coun­tries announced their ambi­tions by pub­lish­ing their first nation­al strategies around 2018. These roadmaps, which vary in their com­pre­hens­ive­ness and sec­tor­al focus, tend to be sim­il­ar, even though these emer­ging play­ers have unique resources and eco­nom­ic struc­tures. The strategies are likely to be refined gradu­ally, as new pub­lic­a­tions emerge and nation­al con­texts evolve.

Jean-François Gag­né. A new play­er on the scene in the late 2010s, the United Arab Emir­ates (UAE) has quickly ris­en to 5^th place in inter­na­tion­al rank­ings (2023 Glob­al AI Vibrancy Rank­ing). Two main factors explain this pro­gress: pub­lic invest­ment in research and devel­op­ment, and the coun­try’s abil­ity to attract inter­na­tion­al tal­ent. To imple­ment their pro­gramme, a min­istry ded­ic­ated solely to AI was cre­ated in 2017 – one of the first in the world – headed by Omar Sul­tan Al Olama, who is lis­ted among the 100 most influ­en­tial people in the sec­tor by TIME Magazine. More recently, Abu Dhabi made head­lines by announ­cing that laws would now be writ­ten using AI. Bey­ond the hype and uncer­tainty, the pro­ject reflects a cer­tain nation­al ambition.

Fur­ther­more, for a coun­try whose eco­nomy remains heav­ily depend­ent on oil rev­en­ues, invest­ing in AI is part of a diver­si­fic­a­tion pro­cess. Will the gamble pay off? Huge sums are being poured into high-risk pro­jects, but there are still many unknowns about the expec­ted res­ults. Des­pite its ambi­tions, the Gulf state lacks the infra­struc­ture resources and remains depend­ent on out­side help at all levels to devel­op its cap­ab­il­it­ies. It should be remembered that, with the excep­tion of the Chinese and US giants, very few coun­tries are cap­able of being inde­pend­ent in the field of AI, as none of them have the full range of resources required. With this in mind, China has redoubled its efforts to estab­lish a foothold through large com­pan­ies based in Abu Dhabi. How­ever, the polit­ic­al and eco­nom­ic elites are seek­ing to main­tain dia­logue with all play­ers, includ­ing the United States. As such, the Emir­ati fund MGX, which is close to the gov­ern­ment, has con­trib­uted fin­an­cially to the colossal Star­gate pro­ject announced by Don­ald Trump in Janu­ary 2025.

When it entered the race in the late 2010s, the Saudi mon­archy attrac­ted glob­al atten­tion by grant­ing cit­izen­ship to a humanoid robot named Sophia for the first time. Once the media hype had died down, in 2020 Riy­adh laid the ground­work for its strategy by set­ting its object­ives with­in the coun­try, unlike the UAE, which is rely­ing heav­ily on for­eign dir­ect invest­ment. Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Sal­man wants to inter­n­al­ise the vari­ous eco­nom­ic levers linked to AI by devel­op­ing a hub with­in the coun­try, while attract­ing invest­ment and human resources. In the long term, this vis­ion could prove fruitful.

In terms of part­ner­ships, while Saudi Ara­bia remains closely linked to the United States, as evid­enced by Don­ald Trump’s latest vis­it in May 2025, which con­cluded with the announce­ment of tech­no­logy con­tracts, it remains open to dia­logue with China. That said, with five years to go before the dead­line set by Vis­ion 2030, the king­dom is still far from being a lead­er in the sec­tor. Accord­ing to vari­ous inter­na­tion­al rank­ings, it is around 25th place, on a par with Malay­sia and Australia.

India is now a major play­er in the field of AI and stands out from the two Gulf states men­tioned above thanks to its loc­al research and devel­op­ment cap­ab­il­it­ies and its con­sid­er­able pool of skilled tal­ent. Thanks to its large pop­u­la­tion and edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the coun­try trains many lead­ing research­ers who con­trib­ute to the latest advances in this con­stantly evolving tech­no­logy. All this is under­pinned by its tech­no­lo­gic­al dia­spora, which is well integ­rated into the major Amer­ic­an tech­no­logy com­pan­ies that have set up research and devel­op­ment centres in the country.

One of the dis­tinct­ive fea­tures of its strategy is its bot­tom-up approach. In oth­er words, the vari­ous Indi­an states are called upon to con­trib­ute to policy-mak­ing at the nation­al level through vari­ous coordin­a­tion mech­an­isms (not­ably NITI Aayog). Far from the hyper-decent­ral­ised Amer­ic­an mod­el, or con­versely, the Chinese mod­el where everything is decided by the lead­er­ship, New Del­hi is rely­ing to a cer­tain extent on a con­struc­tion strategy. Emphas­is is also placed on respect­ing and pre­serving the cul­tur­al and lin­guist­ic diversity of Indi­a’s dif­fer­ent regions in the research and devel­op­ment of AI sys­tems. How­ever, India also faces many chal­lenges, with tech­no­lo­gic­al infra­struc­ture at the top of the agenda, par­tic­u­larly super­com­puters and data centres.

In this more dis­creet but prom­ising group, Singa­pore stands out with its sol­id infra­struc­ture, coher­ent strategy and lead­ing pos­i­tion in research and devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­larly in the area of smart cit­ies. In addi­tion, the coun­try favours open access mod­els, unlike the United States, which opts more for pro­pri­et­ary models.

More gen­er­ally, if we look at the rank­ings of the most advanced coun­tries in terms of capa­city devel­op­ment, a not­able trend emerges: nearly half of the top 10 are emer­ging coun­tries (2023 Glob­al AI Vibrancy Rank­ing). In a com­pet­i­tion involving soph­ist­ic­ated tech­no­lo­gies, this trend may reflect a new form of demo­crat­isa­tion of AI. This cat­egory of play­ers is likely to play an increas­ingly decis­ive role, and their rise raises ques­tions about future changes in the inter­na­tion­al AI landscape.

Finally, states are not the only play­ers in the game. Major forces are exer­ted by Amer­ic­an com­pan­ies, which have acquired stock mar­ket val­ues equi­val­ent to some of the G7 coun­tries’ GDP. For example, Amazon invests as much as France in R&D. These giants have become indis­pens­able play­ers in all inter­na­tion­al for­ums and bene­fit from a sprawl­ing struc­ture, where­as Chin­a’s struc­ture remains lim­ited in its inter­na­tion­al deployment.

Interview by Alicia Piveteau