RIYADH: The Saudi edition of Money20/20 Middle East this week offered a snapshot of how rapidly artificial intelligence is moving from hype to hard deployment in the Kingdom’s financial sector.
With more than 450 fintech companies and over 1,050 global investors gathering under the theme “Where Money Does Business,” the event showed how central AI has become to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 ambitions and how urgent the conversation around regulation, infrastructure and talent has become.
The message across panels was clear: AI is no longer an experiment. It is increasingly embedded in every corner of finance, from fraud detection and onboarding to risk modeling and compliance. The more AI promises to accelerate growth, the more scrutiny it invites.
For Saudi Arabia, the challenge now is scaling adoption while maintaining trust, regulatory alignment and data integrity.
The Kingdom is projected to reap nearly $135.2 billion from AI by 2030, equivalent to about 12.4 percent of gross domestic product, according to PwC. That potential is driving urgency, with nearly all financial-sector leaders saying the pressure to deploy AI has grown over the past six months. Regulators are responding in parallel.
