AI strategy in Saudi Arabia and the UAE is shaped by four distinct factors that differ from global defaults: alignment requirements with Vision 2030 and national AI priorities; compliance with PDPL and sector-specific regulations including SAMA and DIFC; Arabic-language data complexity that affects AI system performance on language-dependent use cases; and a talent market structure that makes in-house AI capability harder to build and sustain than in Western markets. Effective GCC AI strategy accounts for all four from the outset, not as localization of a global playbook.