UiPath Says UAE Is Scaling AI Agents While Saudi Arabia Builds Platforms to Catch Up

In an interview with TahawulTech at UiPath FUSION Dubai on Monday, Crowther said both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have moved past debating whether to adopt AI. He described the UAE as further along. "The UAE is scaling, while Saudi Arabia is putting platforms in place to enable that scale," he said, adding that much of Saudi Arabia's momentum comes from Vision 2030.

Crowther said that over the past couple of years some organisations ran "pilots for the sake of running pilots", often to meet an instruction to adopt AI or agentic technology without first looking at the underlying technology, data and processes. As a result, he said, quite a few pilots failed to produce business results. He said banks, government bodies and aviation companies are now taking a more measured approach, deciding first what success looks like and which high-value processes could deliver a meaningful return.

He said the goal differs by sector. A public body might focus on keeping or improving services for residents, while a bank's risk team might want fewer false positives in its anti-money laundering checks. In every case, he said, companies should define the outcome first, attach measurable indicators to it and track results against them.

On autonomy, Crowther said the line between decisions an AI agent can make alone and those needing human sign-off is still shifting as the technology develops. Regulation, data sovereignty and data residency rules all shape it. He argued that accountability has to stay with people, with agents doing high-value tasks inside processes that humans own. UiPath sells a platform to coordinate agents, software robots and staff within governed workflows.

He also said training staff should come first, since AI lets employees spend more time on higher-value work. His comments match other reports from Dubai this week, including the DIFC regulator's figure that 70 percent of firms in the financial centre now use AI.