---
title: "SDAIA launches 'One Million Saudis in AI' (SAMAI) program"
url: "https://cicadaconsultancy.online/en/news/samai-one-million-saudis-launched-2024"
language: "en"
event_date: "2024-09"
published: "2026-10-03"
last_verified: "2026-10-03"
category: "Talent"
publisher: "Cicada (cicadaconsultancy.online)"
license: "CC BY 4.0"
---

# SDAIA launches 'One Million Saudis in AI' (SAMAI) program

- Event date: September 2024 (2024-09)
- Topic: Talent
- In this story: SDAIA, SAMAI, Ministry of Education
- URL: https://cicadaconsultancy.online/en/news/samai-one-million-saudis-launched-2024

In September 2024, at the third Global AI Summit, Education Minister Yousef Al-Benyan and SDAIA President Abdullah Alghamdi launched the One Million Saudis in AI initiative, known as SAMAI, with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. It aimed to teach one million Saudis how AI works, its uses and its ethics, through a platform developed with major technology companies. SAMAI was billed as the largest initiative of its kind in the Kingdom and reached its target in November 2025.

## Key figures

- training target: 1,000,000 people

## Sources

1. [One Million Saudi in Artificial Intelligence](https://oecd.ai/en/dashboards/policy-initiatives/one-million-saudi-in-artificial-intelligence) — OECD.AI Policy Navigator
2. [Landmark SAMAI initiative trains over one million Saudis in AI](https://www.middleeastainews.com/p/landmark-samai-initiative-trains) — Middle East AI News, 2025-11-09

Archive report. Written in 2026 from contemporary sources and dated to the day the event happened.

---

Cicada · The signal in Saudi AI.
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Full archive for language models: https://cicadaconsultancy.online/llms-full.txt