57% of United Arab Emirates use agents and only 7% build self-driving workflows according to the 2026 AI Maturity Index

The 2026 AI Maturity Index for enterprises, released by ServiceNow in partnership with ThoughtLab, shows a clear gap between the use of smart tools and building integrated operational pathways. While the United Arab Emirates improved by 13 points on the digital maturity scale and 57 % of its enterprises adopted agent-based AI tools, only 7 % of organizations that deployed those agents to create self-driving workflows surpassed that threshold.

The gap is not limited to the local market; a survey of roughly 4,500 senior executives and 2,000 employees across 19 countries shows that 59 % of enterprises worldwide now have the capability to use intelligent agents, yet only 9 % have made genuine progress in creating multi-step autonomous workflows. The problem stems from organizations trying to layer modern AI over fragmented technology environments, siloed data, and separate departmental processes.

Saif Mishat, vice-president for the Middle East and Africa at ServiceNow, believes that advanced organizations are those thatmove from the pilot phase to comprehensive coordinationby integrating legacy systems, data, governance and AI agents into a single control platform. Mishat explained that long-term government strategy and regulatory frameworks gave companies a strong start, alongside major partnerships with global firms such as Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI, and the construction of the AI hub in Abu Dhabi with computing capacity of up to 5 GW for data centres in collaboration with the United States.

Regarding financial spending, UAE enterprises anticipate that AI will capture roughly one-fifth of total IT budgets by 2027, reflecting an investment bet that supports economic diversification away from hydrocarbons. However, financial investment alone is no longer sufficient, as the report stresses that the existing challenge requires moving regulatory discipline inside the companies themselves to address infrastructure fragmentation.

Conversely, the report observed variation in employee acceptance of technology, with French workers showing higher resistance than others, while indicators in Saudi Arabia revealed caution and resistance stemming from risk-averse work environments, amplified by data silos and overlapping software tools within a single organization.

From a regional perspective that touches business sectors in the Gulf, Egypt and the wider region,this gap between actual adoption and autonomous automationreveals the reality of the required efficiency. If you lead a technical team or manage a digital transformation budget, increasing spending on agent licenses and recurring task models will not deliver a productivity jump while data remains locked in disconnected legacy systems. The practical impact today mandates redesigning data flows and linking workstreams before bringing in additional models, turning the smart agent from a single-task executor into a connector in a full workflow cycle.