Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan: The Gulf's Second Tier Goes Digital

Beyond the UAE and Saudi Arabia, several smaller Middle Eastern economies are pursuing artificial intelligence with more modest resources and clearer specialisation.

Qatar:

Qatar has substantial sovereign wealth and a very small citizen population, and has invested in research capacity rather than attempting broad industrial development.

The Qatar Computing Research Institute has produced internationally recognised work, with particular strength in Arabic natural language processing, data analytics and social computing. Its Arabic language work is among the more serious sustained efforts anywhere.

Education City hosts branch campuses of international universities, providing research capability and training.

Applications concentrate in energy, where the country's liquefied natural gas operations are technically sophisticated, along with logistics, aviation and infrastructure management. Hosting major international events drove investment in transport, security and crowd management systems.

Data centre investment has grown, supported by cheap energy and sovereign capital, with international cloud providers establishing regional presence.

Kuwait:

Kuwait has significant oil wealth and has moved more slowly than its neighbours on technology diversification.

Government digitisation programmes have advanced, and the oil sector applies standard industrial machine learning to operations and maintenance.

The private technology sector is small, and Kuwait has not pursued the aggressive AI positioning of the UAE or Saudi Arabia. Political dynamics, including recurring parliamentary friction, have slowed large initiatives.

Oman:

Oman has fewer hydrocarbon resources than its neighbours and has pursued diversification with an emphasis on logistics and renewable energy.

Its ports, positioned outside the Strait of Hormuz, are strategically significant, and logistics optimisation is a natural application area.

Oman has attracted interest for green hydrogen production given excellent solar and wind resources, and the same renewable potential makes it a plausible location for energy-intensive computing, though development is at an early stage.

Government digitisation and a national AI programme exist, with modest scale relative to Gulf neighbours.

Jordan:

Jordan's position is entirely different: limited natural resources, constrained water, and an economy built substantially on services and skilled labour.

The country produces capable technical graduates and has an established information technology sector serving regional clients. Amman hosts a startup ecosystem that, while small, has produced companies with regional reach, and Jordanian technical talent works throughout the Gulf.

Jordan's AI activity concentrates in software services, financial technology and health technology. Arabic language capability is a natural specialisation.

Constraints are severe: water scarcity is among the world's worst, energy costs are high given import dependence, capital is scarce, and regional instability affects investment. Emigration of skilled workers to the Gulf and beyond is substantial.

The common pattern:

The wealthy small states buy capability, investing sovereign funds in infrastructure, research institutions and partnerships, while depending on imported expertise.

Jordan represents the inverse: human capital without capital, exporting talent to the countries that have money but not people.

Both models are constrained by the same regional realities: water scarcity, dependence on foreign technology suppliers, and geopolitical positioning between larger powers whose export controls determine what hardware is available.

The outlook:

None of these states will develop frontier AI capability independently. Their realistic paths are specialisation, Arabic language technology in Qatar's case, logistics and energy applications elsewhere, and positioning as regional hubs for services and infrastructure.