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