The United Arab Emirates has set the most ambitious public-sector AI target in the world. On April 23, 2026, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced a two-year framework that aims to migrate 50 percent of UAE government sectors, services, and operations to autonomous, agentic AI systems by 2028, making it the first national government to operate at this scale through AI agents.
Unlike chatbots that simply answer questions, agentic AI systems can plan, decide, take action, use tools, complete workflows, and refine their results with limited human oversight. The plan reframes government from a service provider into an intelligent operating partner that can analyze, decide, and execute in real time.
The implications for businesses operating in the UAE are immediate. As citizen-facing services become faster and more proactive, customer expectations across the private sector are expected to rise sharply. Companies still relying on manual workflows, disconnected systems, and slow response times are likely to feel the gap quickly. The UAE’s announcement also reinforces the country’s broader bid to position itself as the global benchmark for AI-powered governance, complementing initiatives like Dubai AI Week and the Abu Dhabi-led sovereign cloud build-out with Microsoft and Core42.
