AI transformation UAE: Trust, safety, and sovereignty in technology

Artificial intelligence has long promised to transform the way we live and work, but at GITEX 2025 that promise felt tangible. Across the crowded halls of Dubai World Trade Centre, global executives and regional policymakers spoke not about experiments or pilot projects, but about systems already in motion. The UAE’s technology landscape has entered a more confident phase, one defined by trust, safety and sovereign control over data.

The country has emerged as a proving ground for responsible innovation. Its approach to technology is built on governance and foresight, blending ambition with accountability. Guided by a clear national strategy and a culture of collaboration, the country is building the foundation for an AI-powered future that values safety, sovereignty and human progress in equal measure.

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From adoption to action

For Tareq Masoud, Country Manager UAE at Snowflake, this year marked a turning point. In his words, if 2024 was the year of adoption, 2025 and beyond belong to AI in production. Organisations across the country are now seeking unified platforms that bring together governance, performance and interoperability within a single data and AI foundation.

Masoud explained that companies want to innovate but not at the expense of control. The appetite for locally compliant and DESC-certified systems has never been higher, he said, as more firms insist that sensitive information stays inside their national boundaries. According to a joint study by Snowflake and MIT Technology Review Insights, almost sixty per cent of regional business leaders identify governance, privacy and security as their biggest AI concerns.

Snowflake’s response has been to strengthen its regional presence with infrastructure on Microsoft Azure in the UAE and Google Cloud in Saudi Arabia, with an AWS Middle East launch planned for early 2026. These initiatives, Masoud said, give enterprises genuine choice while maintaining local compliance.

He believes the most successful organisations will be those that turn raw information into meaningful intelligence without compromising security. “The real differentiator is not how much data a company holds but how responsibly it turns that data into insight,” he said.

“The market is moving towards AI built on trust where transparent governance and resilience define competitiveness.”

The rise of the agentic enterprise

Across the exhibition floor, Salesforce presented a different but complementary vision. Mohammed Alkhotani, the company’s Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Middle East, described the region as a driving force in global AI transformation. “The Middle East is not simply adopting technology,” he said. “It is shaping the worldwide conversation around AI-powered progress.”

Alkhotani pointed to a clear shift from exploration to real-world deployment. Businesses and governments alike are looking for measurable results, governance and secure data foundations rather than one-off experiments. He also spoke about the region’s growing ambition to create what he calls agentic enterprises and, eventually, agentic cities. In these environments, AI agents work alongside humans to deliver smarter public services, more efficient operations and deeply personalised experiences.

At GITEX, Salesforce demonstrated its new Agentforce 360 platform, which allows companies to build and deploy AI agents across sales, service, marketing and commerce using their own trusted data. The concept captured wide attention because it combined practicality with safety.

“Leaders across the region are ready for enterprise-grade AI that delivers real impact while preserving human oversight,” Alkhotani said.

He also revealed that Slack data residency will soon be available in the UAE, turning Slack into a secure collaborative workspace within national data frameworks. The move fits neatly into Salesforce’s wider strategy of blending intelligence with local empowerment.

Collaboration as a catalyst

Both executives agree that GITEX has evolved from an exhibition into a powerful engine for collaboration. For Snowflake, the event helped deepen partnerships across the public and private sectors. The company sponsored the startup pavilion at Expand North Star, where it worked with founders to show how enterprise-level data solutions can help them scale responsibly. “These partnerships support Dubai’s D33 digital-economy agenda and strengthen the wider ecosystem,” Masoud said.

For Salesforce, the value of GITEX lay in the quality of dialogue. Alkhotani said the most productive conversations were about resilience and cooperation rather than technology alone. “Every discussion came back to the same idea, that sustainable transformation depends on shared purpose and long-term collaboration,” he explained.

This alignment reflects national strategies such as Saudi Vision 2030 and the UAE’s National AI Strategy 2031, both of which place governance and partnership at the heart of innovation.

Responsible intelligence

Among the many product demonstrations at GITEX, Snowflake’s Cortex AISQL and OpenFlow drew particular interest. Visitors were intrigued by the ability to perform natural-language analysis and AI-powered decision-making in live business settings ranging from financial risk modelling to healthcare analytics. Masoud said the enthusiasm proved that companies now want tools that deliver results at scale rather than experimental prototypes. Cortex AISQL integrates generative AI directly into SQL, while OpenFlow connects multiple data sources into one governed platform, tackling a longstanding regional challenge: data fragmentation.

“The response showed that organisations are prioritising efficiency, sovereignty and compliance,” Masoud said. “CIOs are looking for platforms that unify data, compute and AI in one trusted environment.”

Cities of the future

Alkhotani sees this new mindset extending beyond the corporate world. Governments across the region, he said, are now building what could become the first true agentic cities on the planet. “These cities will combine AI, data and human creativity to deliver smarter public services and sustainable growth,” he said. Salesforce is investing in education and training to prepare for that future. “Through initiatives like Trailhead and our partnerships with universities across the GCC, we are helping to develop the next generation of digital leaders and AI specialists.”

Trust at the core

For both Snowflake and Salesforce, trust is the central theme. The UAE’s emphasis on secure infrastructure, data sovereignty and ethical deployment is giving the region a distinctive advantage in the global AI economy. Analysts expect artificial intelligence to contribute as much as one hundred and fifty billion US dollars to the region’s GDP by 2030, but the bigger story lies in how that growth will be achieved.

Masoud pointed to Snowflake’s collaboration with RAK Innovation City and the continued expansion of its Ras Al Khaimah operations centre as examples of this commitment. The company’s strategy, he said, is to help build a sustainable and intelligent mobility ecosystem that combines innovation with compliance.

Alkhotani sees the same philosophy across the region. “Public-private collaboration is accelerating progress in sustainability, service excellence and workforce development,” he said. “GITEX demonstrated how these partnerships can turn vision into reality.”

From hype to heritage

The UAE’s AI story has moved well beyond the language of hype. It is becoming part of the region’s economic and social fabric. Whether through Snowflake’s unified data cloud or Salesforce’s human-centred agents, the narrative now revolves around maturity and accountability.

The country’s approach to artificial intelligence is distinct and increasingly influential. It values sovereignty, it insists on safety, and it embraces intelligence that serves human progress rather than replacing it. As the world continues to debate the risks and rewards of AI, the UAE is quietly building its own model, one that places responsibility at its core.

Smarter systems. Safer innovation. Sovereign control. Those three principles are defining the UAE’s technological identity and giving it a genuine advantage in the global race for intelligent transformation.

Sana Eqbal

Staff Writer

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sana@khaleejtimes.com

Sana Eqbal is a journalist with over 10 years of experience and a media strategist specialising in corporate communications, public relations, digital media, and content management.