PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey: Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT)

_{Figure 1: What do you believe economic growth (i.e. gross domestic product) will be over the next 12 months in your territory?}

Against this backdrop of sustained digital investment and policy-led demand, TMT CEOs are more confident than their global peers in both near-term revenue prospects (48% versus 40% globally) and longer-term growth (76% versus 53%). The strength of regional fundamentals is enabling leaders to plan with greater certainty, invest at scale and prioritise expansion across converging segments of the sector (see Figure 2).

Leadership behaviour reinforces this shift. TMT CEOs in the Middle East dedicate a greater share of their time to long-term strategic planning than global peers, spending on average 21% of their schedules dedicated to activities in this time frame compared with 14% globally.

_{Figure 2: How confident are you about your company’s prospects for revenue growth? (Very and extremely confident)}

For intra-regional investment opportunities, Middle East TMT CEOs see the strongest potential in Saudi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt. Given Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s massive investments in AI compute, gaming, semiconductors and data centres, backed by sovereign capital and national strategies and large-scale public-private collaboration, Middle East TMT CEOs see the strongest potential in these two key economies in the GCC, followed by Egypt that enjoys a digitally engaged population and a growing technology workforce.

AI has become a primary source of differentiation for Middle East TMT firms, shaping how they innovate, operate and compete. 74% of Middle East TMT CEOs identify innovation as a critical component of business strategy, while 69% report rapid testing of new ideas with customers and 67% collaborate actively with external partners (see Figure 3).

_{Figure 3: To what extent do each of the following statements characterise your company’s approach to innovation? (Summary net: To a large or very large extent)}

Regional TMT leaders have embedded AI across networks, services and customer engagement, improving efficiency, enabling new digital offerings and reinforcing competitive advantage. 60% of respondents have reported use of AI in sales, marketing and customer service. In parallel, 51% say AI has been embedded directly into products and customer experiences, higher than the global TMT average (see Figure 4).

While these are strong indicative signals of progress, there remains significant headroom to fully leverage advanced AI capabilities across network optimisation, predictive operations and next-generation service innovation – moving beyond AI-driven chatbots and service automation.

_{Figure 4: To what extent has AI been applied in the following areas of your business? (SUMMARY NET: To a large or very large extent)}

Organisational readiness for AI across the Middle East TMT sector is high, with 88% of regional TMT CEOs surveyed reporting a culture that supports adoption, 79% saying their technology environment is enabling the integration of AI and 76% indicating having a clearly defined AI roadmap, above the global averages (see Figure 5). This provides a strong platform for execution at scale.

_{Figure 5: To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements relating to AI use at your company? (Agree)}

Deal activity across the Middle East TMT sector is being driven by the accelerating pace of digital transformation. Deal activity focused on data centres, telecommunications, digital infrastructure, and media platforms, reflecting ambitions to scale sovereign digital capacity and build AI-enabled economic ecosystems.

More than half of Middle East TMT CEOs plan to make at least one major acquisition worth more than 10% of company assets in the next three years, up from 45% last year and above the global TMT average of 41%.

As AI adoption deepens and demand for digital platforms, automation and infrastructure grows, M&A is increasingly being used by TMT leaders in the Middle East to acquire capabilities, technologies and market access that would be difficult to build organically at speed.

Globally, dealmaking is also increasingly being shaped by the infrastructure demands of AI. Competitive advantage is shifting toward companies with access to large-scale compute capacity — the high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), cloud platforms and hyperscale data centres required to train and run advanced models. This is why technology leaders are directing record levels of investment into.¹

In the region, cross-border expansion has continued, with 71% of Middle East TMT CEOs saying they have begun competing in new sectors or industries over the last five years. According to the 2026 Transact Middle East report,² cross-sector deal activity in TMT reflects the region’s push to consolidate infrastructure, secure content and expand digital platforms. In digital infrastructure, technology group G42’s US$2.2bn acquisition of telecom provider e&’s 40% stake in Khazna Data Centre Holdings will strengthen the compute backbone required for national AI programmes.

Cross-border telecom expansion is also seen as operators broadened connectivity and digital service portfolios, while adjacent digital platforms attracted inbound capital. Turkey-based Paribu acquired 100% of Bahrain’s CoinMENA for US$240m, highlighting investor appetite for scalable fintech infrastructure, and the US’s Warner Bros. Discovery acquired a 30% stake in regional media and entertainment company, OSN Streaming, indicating growing global confidence in the region’s subscription-based digital ecosystems. These transactions illustrate how TMT dealmaking is converging across infrastructure, media, fintech and platform technologies to capture value in the Middle East’s expanding digital economy.

Industrials and services are the most targeted adjacencies across the whole TMT sector, cited by 36% of regional TMT CEOs, followed by consumer markets and financial services both at 31% (see Figure 6). This points to a deliberate push into adjacencies where digital platforms and data capabilities can be scaled.

_{Figure 6: In which of the following industries (if any), outside of your own, will you seek to grow your business (including partnering with others to do so) over the next three years?}

Cyber risk is the most significant threat facing Middle East TMT leaders, cited by 48%, up from 40% last year (see Figure 7). Geopolitical conflict follows, at 38%, reflecting exposure to global realignments and supply chain disruption. 

As AI and cloud adoption scale across the sector, cyber risk is shaped by the complexity of digital environments rather than isolated systems. Reliance on cloud platforms, connected products and data-intensive services is expanding the attack surface, reinforcing why governance and trust are now as critical as technical controls.

_{Figure 7: How exposed do you believe your company will be to the following key threats in the next 12 months? (showing sum of highly or extremely exposed)}

Additionally, 31% of Middle East TMT CEOs cite availability of key skills as a top threat for the next 12 months, above the global industry average of 27%. Finding and retaining talent was also the most cited constraint to operational performance that TMT CEOs in the Middle East are currently facing, with 38% raising this issue.

Beyond immediate threats, transformation remains a central concern for Middle East TMT CEOs – particularly whether their organisations are moving quickly enough to keep pace with rapid technological change. This was cited by 40% of TMT CEOs surveyed in the region. Business leaders in this sector are also concerned about the disruption caused from geopolitical events and how to prepare for it and the innovation capabilities of their companies.

_{Figure 8: What is the question that concerns you most these days?}

In response to the short-term elevated risks that exist, Middle East TMT leaders are increasing their focus on preparedness and structural change. 67% plan to strengthen enterprise-wide cybersecurity over the next three years, while 43% expect to reduce reliance on technology providers based in countries considered less trustworthy - nearly double the global rate. These actions reflect a more deliberate approach to managing geopolitical and cyber exposure and signal a shift from reactive risk management to planned resilience.

This is further reinforced by indications around their readiness to respond to change. 55% of Middle East TMT CEOs say their organisations are prepared to anticipate disruption before it occurs, considerably higher compared with the 34% of global peers, while 64% say they are prepared to lead an effective organisational response when disruption emerges.

While our CEO Survey findings reflect the confidence of TMT CEOs across industries in the near and medium term, PwC’s economists have also looked further out to the decade ahead across sectors and analysed how two major global megatrends – AI and climate change – are driving industry reconfiguration (see figure 9) and the emergence of new domains of growth: markets where companies work across sector boundaries to meet fundamental human needs of how we build, care, feed, fuel, make and move, and how we connect and compute, fund and insure and govern and serve.

According to PwC research, the pressure to reinvent for technology, media and telecommunications companies is intensifying. For leaders, the opportunity lies in capturing value in the emerging domain of ‘connect and compute’ where infrastructure, platforms and digital services intersect to meet fundamental human needs. The future will be hybrid, combining next-generation satellites with fibre networks to create a more resilient, scalable and intelligent connectivity backbone. Companies that make bold moves now could emerge as the backbone of future digital economies in the ‘connect and compute’ domain.

As industries and public services digitise, companies in the ‘connect and compute’ domain could generate approximately US$150 billion in value by 2035, presenting a significant value to be captured for those prepared.

_{Figure 9: Industry reconfiguration in the decade ahead}