Samer Choucair: Internet Penetration and AI Adoption Are Redrawing Saudi Arabia’s Digital Investment Landscape
Investment leader Samer Choucair said Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation has entered a new phase, moving beyond expanding connectivity toward converting intensive digital usage into productivity and investment returns. With internet penetration reaching 99.6% in 2025 and adoption of artificial intelligence tools doubling to 45.2%, Choucair believes the shift is reshaping capital allocation across the Saudi economy in 2026.
Samer Choucair said data from the Communications, Space and Technology Commission’s “Saudi Internet 2025” report show that 61.3% of internet users spend seven hours or more online each day. Average mobile internet data consumption reached 53 gigabytes per person per month, while median download speeds reached 216 Mbps. The use of digital government services reached 96%, electronic banking services 85.9%, and online shopping 76.9%.
According to Choucair, these indicators suggest connectivity should no longer be viewed simply as infrastructure. It has become a productive input into the economy.
“The phase of the internet as infrastructure is approaching completion, and the marginal return from expanding coverage is becoming limited,” Choucair said. “The next source of value will come from intensity: the volume of data, hours of usage, the rate at which that usage converts into paid services, and companies’ ability to monetize artificial intelligence as a working tool.”
Samer Choucair noted that the digital economy accounted for approximately 15.8% of GDP in 2025, while the information and communications technology market reached roughly SAR 199 billion. At the same time, 33.1% of Saudi establishments were using artificial intelligence technologies in 2025, representing annual growth of 20%.
Choucair said the gap between AI adoption among individuals, at 45.2%, and adoption among businesses, at 33.1%, carries significant investment implications. Artificial intelligence is used by 80.8% of users for information searches, compared with only 17.3% for work-related tasks.
“The consumer has moved ahead of the enterprise,” Choucair said. “That opens a new spending cycle around integration, governance, data security, and training.”
He added that financial markets often price the consumer-adoption phase faster than they price the transition toward productive enterprise use.
“Markets often price the moment of consumer adoption faster than the moment of productive conversion,” Choucair said. “The more disciplined institutional investment strategy is to own the companies capable of closing that gap, rather than those benefiting only from the excitement surrounding usage.”
From Connectivity to Digital Infrastructure
Choucair said capital is increasingly moving across three interconnected layers of Saudi Arabia’s digital economy.
The first is connectivity infrastructure. Telecommunications operators continue to benefit from rising data consumption, but with internet penetration already at 99.6%, future growth will increasingly depend on cloud services, the Internet of Things, and enterprise solutions rather than subscriber expansion alone.
The second layer is computing infrastructure and data centers. As Saudi Arabia expands its artificial intelligence capabilities and broader digital infrastructure, electricity, land, cooling systems, and advanced computing chips are becoming increasingly important investment inputs directly connected to the growth of the digital economy.
The third layer is applications and digital services, including e-commerce, payments, education, healthcare, and government services. This opportunity is reinforced by online shopping penetration of 76.9% and the fact that 95.3% of online shoppers prefer local websites.
For institutional investors, this transition changes the investment thesis. The opportunity is shifting from simply financing connectivity toward owning the infrastructure, platforms, and services capable of monetizing the activity taking place on top of that connectivity.
Where Institutional Capital Could Find Opportunity
Samer Choucair said some of the most investable opportunities for institutional portfolios are emerging in digital infrastructure and data centers, telecommunications operators capable of converting network capacity into enterprise services, domestic digital platforms, and venture-capital strategies focused on Arabic-language applications and services.
The investment case for data centers is particularly important because the expansion of artificial intelligence creates demand well beyond computing capacity itself. It also increases requirements for reliable electricity, cooling infrastructure, specialized real estate, high-speed connectivity, and advanced semiconductor capacity.
For telecom operators, meanwhile, near-universal internet penetration changes the economics of growth. The next stage is less about connecting additional users and more about increasing the economic value generated by each connected user and enterprise.
Local platforms could also benefit from the maturity of Saudi digital consumption. With a high proportion of consumers already shopping, banking, and interacting with government services online, the competitive advantage increasingly shifts toward platforms capable of improving monetization, customer retention, payments integration, and service efficiency.
AI Adoption Creates a New Investment Gap
Choucair believes one of the most important signals for investors is the difference between widespread experimentation with AI and its relatively limited integration into productive business processes.
High consumer adoption demonstrates familiarity with the technology, but institutional value will depend on whether companies can incorporate artificial intelligence into workflows that reduce costs, improve decision-making, automate processes, and increase employee productivity.
Closing that gap could create a significant investment cycle around enterprise software, cybersecurity, data governance, cloud infrastructure, workforce training, and AI integration.
Rather than treating AI adoption itself as the investment thesis, Choucair argues that institutional investors should focus on businesses capable of turning adoption into measurable economic output.
The Risks Behind the Digital Expansion
Choucair cautioned that rapid expansion also creates risks. Investment in data centers could run ahead of revenue generation, particularly where large capital commitments are based on expectations of future AI demand that take longer than anticipated to materialize.
A significant share of current AI usage also remains concentrated in relatively low-value activities rather than deeply integrated enterprise applications.
Privacy, data governance, cybersecurity, and dependence on foreign AI models represent additional risks that investors will need to incorporate into valuations.
These factors make capital discipline increasingly important. Building digital infrastructure at scale does not automatically guarantee attractive returns if utilization, pricing power, or enterprise demand fail to justify the capital invested.
From Digital Adoption to Economic Productivity
Samer Choucair said the central investment question facing Saudi Arabia is therefore changing. The market has largely moved beyond asking whether consumers and businesses will become digitally connected. The next question is how much economic value can be extracted from that connectivity.
“Investing in Saudi Arabia’s digital economy is no longer a bet on the technology narrative,” Choucair said. “It is a bet on converting universal connectivity into productivity. When internet penetration reaches 99.6% and the Saudi user consumes three times the global average in data, the real question becomes how much economic value can be extracted from every gigabyte, every hour of usage, and every AI model integrated into a productive process.”
Samer Choucair concluded that the success of the next phase will be measured by Saudi Arabia’s ability to translate rapid artificial intelligence adoption into tangible improvements in enterprise productivity, government-spending efficiency, and private-sector profitability.
If that transition succeeds, the digital economy could become an increasingly important pillar of Saudi Arabia’s broader economic diversification strategy under Vision 2030, shifting the investment story from connectivity and adoption toward productivity, monetization, and sustainable returns.