Doha, Qatar: Qatar is positioning itself to move from adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to building the sovereign data, talent and technology capabilities needed to shape how AI is deployed at national scale, speakers noted at the Artefact AI Connect Summit Doha 2026 yesterday.
The summit convened government representatives, business leaders and technology experts to discuss how AI is reshaping operations, decision-making and service delivery across Qatar’s public and private sectors.
During his opening address, the CEO and Managing Partner of Artefact Middle East, Southeast Asia & India, Rahul Arya, said organisations should avoid building their AI strategies around one model, technology or vendor. “The architecture of the future needs to be model-agnostic, interoperable and governed by design,” he said. “Sovereignty is not isolation, however it is managed interdependence. Organisations should be able to benefit from global innovation while retaining control over their data, workflows and critical applications.”
Arya said Qatar’s ability to develop local AI capability would also depend on partnerships that combine international technology with trusted data foundations and local expertise. He stressed that human capability as a critical component of what he described as sovereign AI.
He remarked that the country have institutions, infrastructure and emerging ecosystem needed to move from being an AI adopter toward helping shape how the technology is deployed nationally.
The CEO further added “Technology and compute can be bought, and models can be accessed. What cannot simply be bought is the capability to identify where AI creates value, redesign organisations around it, govern it responsibly and keep innovating. Talent will ultimately become one of the most important sovereign AI assets for any country.”
In his keynote speech, the French Ambassador to Qatar, H E Arnaud Pescheux, highlighted AI as an increasingly important pillar of the long-standing Qatar-France relationship. He pointed to cooperation in investment, research, digital sovereignty and education, while emphasising Qatar’s Digital Agenda 2030 and efforts to strengthen sovereign computing, cloud infrastructure and AI training.
The opening session was followed by a panel discussion examining how AI is transforming key industries in Qatar, with experts highlighting the importance of strong data foundations, responsible AI deployment and sector-specific applications.
The discussion explored how organisations across areas including financial services and other industries can move beyond experimental AI projects to integrate the technology into core operations, decision-making and customer services.
Regional Vice President of Middle East & Saudi Arabia at Informatica from Salesforce, Samy Hegazy, said organisations often begin their AI journey by asking which model or agent they should deploy, when the more fundamental question is whether their data is ready.
“AI can be powerful at recognising patterns and making predictions, but your organisational data describes your actual business reality,” he said. “If that data is fragmented, poorly governed or low quality, even the most advanced AI tools will struggle to deliver accurate and widely adopted results.”
Hegazy cited examples from agriculture and banking to illustrate the potential impact of improving data foundations before deploying AI.
On the other hand, financial services are also emerging as a major area for AI deployment. Partner and Financial Services Lead at Artefact, Michel Barakat, emphasised that banks are using AI across sales and customer activation, compliance, risk management and productivity.
Officials also pointed to AI transition in Qatar, where infrastructure and models are part of the equation.
