Agentic AI Adoption Outpaces Execution, and Founders Are Being Asked to Explain the Gap
Founders building or deploying AI agents in the UAE and elsewhere are invited to describe what their systems do, who depends on them, and what stands in the way.
Agentic AI has crossed from experiment to expectation, and execution has not kept pace. Organizations have implemented agents in large numbers, but only a few use them to run autonomous workflows. The gap between the two — between the companies testing agents and the ones operating on them — is where the next generation of technology businesses is being built. It is not a gap specific to any single country.
In the UAE the intent is explicit. The government aims to run 50% of federal government sectors, services and operations on agentic AI within two years. The target spans services and operations as well as sectors, so it reaches past a single agency's back office and into how public business gets done.
Sheikh Hamdan launched a Create AI Agents Championship with a prize pool of more than AED 2.5 million, adding public weight to the same push. Taken together, the signals point one way: the Middle East is becoming one of the most important markets for founders to understand and have a presence in. For founders outside the region, that means a market worth visiting rather than reading about.
Founders and co-founders building or deploying agentic AI in the UAE or globally are invited to submit a short online form. Companies at any stage, from pre-seed to scale, are in scope. Submissions close on November 20, 2026.
Selected founders may be featured across print and digital platforms. They are asked what their agents do, who relies on them, the results they deliver, and what obstacles they face. Talent, trust, funding and regulation are among the difficulties likely to come up, and the answers are usually more revealing than a product demo.
Answering in those terms has a use beyond the form. A two-year government target makes adoption something measurable, and the replies on hiring, trust and regulatory approval will show whether the distance between a working pilot and an autonomous operation is a technical problem or an organizational one. That distinction matters more than the size of the pilot portfolio.
