As AI shifts from experimentation to everyday business use, Alfred Manasseh, co-founder and COO of Shaffra, explains in this interview how trust, governance and accountability will be instrumental in shaping the adoption of autonomous AI teams in the Gulf Cooperation Council nations.
AI has moved from hype to real business adoption. How would you describe the current perception of AI among organizations in the GCC?
The perception has shifted from curiosity to cautious confidence. AI is no longer limited to supporting
workflows from the sidelines; organizations are increasingly willing to let it carry out defined tasks
across operations, finance, HR, customer service and knowledge management. The next evolution is
moving beyond individual AI tools towards enterprise AI workforce platforms that let organizations
design, deploy and manage autonomous AI teams across business functions.
This is supported by strong regional ambitions, including the UAE’s National Strategy for Artificial
Intelligence 2031 and Saudi Arabia’s wider Vision 2030 technology agenda. Saudi Arabia’s ICT market
reached SAR 199 billion (about $53 billion) by the end of 2025, illustrating the scale of digital investment behind the shift.
By 2028, Gartner projects that 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024. What matters is what this represents: AI is moving from a tool employees use to an operating capability embedded in how work gets done.
The next phase will be defined by trusted execution: AI operating within clear permissions and controls, with people accountable for judgment, strategy and the decisions that matter most.
As companies increasingly rely on AI platforms and AI agents, what factors are shaping trust, tech performance, transparency, governance or something else?
As organizations move from AI recommendations to AI agents that can take action, trust becomes
operational. It is not enough for a system to produce a good answer; leaders need to know what it can
access, what it is allowed to do, when it must escalate, and how its actions are logged and measured.
That means performance, security, transparency and governance are not separate issues. They are part of the same trust architecture. Enterprise AI needs role-based permissions, auditable actions, clear decision boundaries, human oversight for high-impact decisions, and measurable performance against business outcomes.
At Shaffra, this is the principle behind our Enterprise AI Workforce Platform: giving organizations a way to deploy autonomous AI teams without giving up control.
The companies that build lasting trust will be those that can show not only that their AI works, but that it works predictably, securely and accountably at scale.
The global conversation around AI includes both excitement and concerns. Do you think businesses in the GCC approach AI differently from markets like the US and Europe? Why?
I do not think the GCC sees AI through a completely different lens from the US or Europe. Businesses
everywhere care about efficiency, security, ROI and risk. The distinction is that, in the GCC, enterprise
adoption is often closely connected to national transformation agendas, public-sector modernization
and economic competitiveness. The UAE’s AI strategy, for example, explicitly connects AI adoption with government, economic development, infrastructure and governance.
That creates strong momentum to move from pilots into operational use, while questions around data
sovereignty, local hosting, security and governance remain central, particularly in government and
regulated sectors.
So the conversation here is increasingly bigger than, “How can AI make an employee more productive?” It is becoming, “How do we redesign parts of the organization around AI while keeping control, accountability and trust?”
That is why I believe the GCC will be one of the important markets for demonstrating how autonomous AI teams can work alongside people at enterprise scale. As AI becomes more influential in business decision-making, what will determine which AI companies earn long-term trust from organisations?
Organizations will increasingly evaluate AI providers based on their ability to solve complex operational challenges, integrate with existing systems and deliver consistent results at scale. The AI companies that succeed will be those that help organisations confidently transition from AI experimentation to practical adoption.
They will also look for platforms that provide enterprise-grade governance, measurable AI
workforce performance and the ability to scale autonomous AI teams across multiple functions securely.
