Welcome back,
The Gulf has most definitely been walking the talk on AI this week. The Abu Dhabi Government is leading the way in licensing its own AI-enabled public services. And, soaring data centre capacity projections point to the GCC’s dominance as an AI infrastructure hub.
Put simply, the future is bright for AI professionals wanting to make the Gulf their home.
With that thought in mind, read on for all the usual AI and careers knowledge and insight, Gulf-wide and globally.
AI news ACROSS THE GULF
1. AI fuels a 200% leap in GCC data centre capacity: A recent S&P Global Ratings report projects capacity could almost triple to roughly 3 gigawatts over the next five years. It’s driven by the massive physical infrastructure needed to power growing AI and cloud services in the GCC.
Why's the Gulf so hot when it comes to AI? Speed and cost versus other markets. Electricity tariffs in KSA and the UAE range from $0.05 to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, compared to $0.09 to $0.15 per kWh in the US. If you needed another reason to build your AI career in the Gulf, this is it.
2. Abu Dhabi’s Gov got so good at AI, it now sells it: The leadership this week launched TAMM Global, a private tech company to licence its AI-powered government services internationally. Now, administrations worldwide can incorporate AI-powered public services built in the UAE capital. Abu Dhabi has long aimed to be the world’s first AI-native government. With 4.7 million users and 1,200 services currently on the TAMM platform, they’re well on the way to achieving it.
3. KSA helps citizens to unmask deepfakes: The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) and the Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST) launched “It’s AI”, a public awareness campaign designed to raise awareness of the risk of deepfakes and synthetic AI. The initiative will help citizens assess digital content and avoid being deceived by AI-generated human likeness. Consider this a deepening of KSA’s AI enforcement efforts and a sign of growing demand for provenance and content-authenticity skills among AI talent.
WHAT HAPPENED WORLDWIDE
1. Anthropic gave us a glimpse into its work and workforce: The AI mammoth published a report detailing how employment is changing at Anthropic. The highlights: the company’s junior cohort is shrinking in technical departments, down from 21% to 14% since early ‘25. Junior technical hires also fell from 27% to 9%. Meeting time per employee is up 20% year on year, while 20% of staff said their job had shifted from doing work to managing Claudes. If you’re early in your career, pay attention: this is how the ladder could change.
2. Stripe says agentic transactions went “vertical” in September: That’s according to the payment firm’s president John Collison, in conversation with Zuckerberg and Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang. The comments weren’t backed up with hard numbers. However, Coinbase’s x402 protocol (backed by Stripe and others) has processed over 35 million transactions and $10 million in volume on Solana alone since its 2025 launch. If you work in payments, commerce or fraud, agentic checkout is no longer “something for 2027”.
3. Microsoft labels agents an insider threat: On the potential of agents, the tech giant claimed: “with that capability can come insider risk.” Access to company data, applications, tools, and other agents was touted as the source of this risk. The fix? “We should not ask a model to be its own security authority”. That’s why Microsoft shipped Guardian Agents and agent detection in its Defender solution, which identifies up to 60 agent types employees run themselves. It’s another reason why AI governance skills are growing increasingly valuable to employers.
top AI JOBS
🇰🇼 AI Engineer, Masaj 📍 Kuwait City
🇸🇦 Forward Deployed AI Engineer, Crayon Data 📍 Riyadh
🇸🇦 Manager, Exploration & Mining Artificial Intelligence, Maaden 📍 Riyadh
🇦🇪 Applied AI Engineer - Agentic Systems, Deeplight 📍 Dubai
🇦🇪 Data Scientist, Digifloat 📍 Abu Dhabi
| Search all jobs on Bravou |
THE debate
If you think making a career pivot into AI is impossible, think again. Many of today’s ‘new’ AI roles are well-trodden career paths with some added AI capabilities. It means your wildest AI ambitions could be closer than you realise.
‘AI Governance Consultant’ is an evolution of a Compliance Officer. ‘Orchestration Engineer’ describes a form of Integration Engineer.
Don't be misled: in most cases you will need practical experience with automation to secure an AI role. But self-learning and a precisely targeted job search can move you closer to a role in the space.
Our latest article explores how AI jobs are repackaged from existing roles, and gives practical guidance on what you can do today to start your AI pivot.
channels to follow
📖 Middle East AI News, Substack: A no-brainer if you’re looking to build your AI career in the Gulf. Curated headlines of the most important developments propeling the industry forward.
📖 Recruiting Brainfood, Substack: This Substack is built for recruiters, which is precisely why we’re including it. It’s a weekly round-up of what’s happening in hiring and talent. Use it as insider information to learn how you’re being screened, sourced and assessed by the people handling your CV.
🗞️ The Batch, Newsletter: A plain-language rundown of what shipped each week from the big brains at DeepLearning.AI. The easiest way of keeping up with the sometimes overwhelming pace of model change.
THE FINAL WORD
If you spend any time exploring the AI corners of X, you may have encountered an excellent piece of writing from Felix Rieseberg, engineering lead on Claude.
He explained how we can all be more ambitious using our chosen AI model. More specifically, Rieseberg describes how models can be applied to hack our self-efficacy: the extent to which we believe in our own ability to complete tasks.
Below is a snapshot of the four ambition types Rieseberg details in the full piece found here. It's a worthwhile read that puts substance behind how AI can supercharge the velocity of human ingenuity.
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