Khaled Koubaa
AT Worthy is pleased to announce the publication of the Global AI Worthiness Index 2025, or GAWI 2025.
This inaugural edition introduces a different way to read the global AI landscape. It does not ask which country is merely moving fastest or spending most aggressively. It asks a more consequential question: which countries are building AI ecosystems that are capable, governable, and aligned with public value.
Covering 195 jurisdictions, GAWI 2025 establishes a global baseline for assessing how nations build, govern, and apply artificial intelligence. It is designed for policymakers, regulators, investors, researchers, and institutional leaders who need a more structured view of where real strengths exist, where foundational gaps persist, and what strategic choices will matter as AI becomes part of economic and social infrastructure.
At the core of the Index is AT Worthy's STAR Framework, which evaluates national AI ecosystems across four interdependent pillars: Standards and Governance, Talent and Research, Adoption and Public Value, and Resources and Infrastructure. Together, these pillars provide a comparative view of how countries convert ambition into credible, system level AI trajectories.
Standards and Governance examines how nations design and enforce transparent, interoperable, and accountable systems for managing AI. Talent and Research measures the intellectual and educational foundations of innovation, including the ability to generate knowledge, develop expertise, and sustain research ecosystems. Adoption and Public Value assesses whether AI is being translated into societal and institutional benefit, including stronger public services and measurable public outcomes. Resources and Infrastructure captures the technical and industrial base that makes sustained AI development possible, including compute, connectivity, data capacity, and supporting infrastructure.
GAWI is deliberately structured around equilibrium rather than dominance. A country may perform strongly in one pillar, or even two, but true AI worthiness emerges only when these dimensions reinforce one another and the system functions coherently. In that sense, the Index is not a scoreboard of raw power. It is a diagnostic of structural maturity.
One of the central findings of GAWI 2025 is stark. Two thirds of the world are still watching from the sidelines.
According to the Index, 67 percent of countries fall into the Bystanders tier. Only 23 percent qualify as Deployers, while just 10 percent reach the Builders tier. This distribution is not incidental. It reveals a profound maturity gap at the precise moment AI is becoming a general purpose infrastructure comparable in strategic significance to electricity or the internet.
Most countries are still at an early stage of building what matters most: governance capacity, talent depth, adoption pathways, and infrastructure readiness. When two out of three countries remain behind on the most consequential technological shift of the century, the issue is no longer simply competitive. It becomes systemic. Dependency gaps do not remain static. They widen. Innovation does not pause for late adopters.
GAWI 2025 was built to make that reality visible. Its purpose is not to name and shame. Its purpose is to create a shared diagnostic. Where are the structural weaknesses? What distinguishes Builders from Bystanders? Which policy, investment, and institutional levers can move a country forward?
This first edition also highlights the structural core of the global AI ecosystem through its Top 20 countries. These countries are not important merely because of scale. They matter because they demonstrate a stronger alignment between capability and responsibility. In the logic of this Index, worthiness emerges where advanced compute, research depth, and adoption capacity intersect with governance, standards, and public value. That is the difference between building powerful systems and building systems that institutions and societies can trust.
The broader geographic signal is also revealing. Europe stands out for institutional depth and regulatory coherence. Asia demonstrates execution speed and industrial scale. North America continues to anchor platform and research leadership. The Middle East is advancing through concentrated national investment and strategic state led positioning. These are different models, but each offers lessons about how AI ecosystems mature in practice.
The publication of GAWI 2025 marks the beginning of a longer effort by AT Worthy to advance a more disciplined understanding of AI readiness and responsibility at the national level. As governments and institutions confront questions of sovereignty, competitiveness, governance, and public trust, the need for a shared analytical baseline becomes more urgent.
If it is not acceptable for most of the world to remain spectators of AI, then action must begin at the foundation. That is where AI worthiness starts.
The full report, including methodology, indicators, and country results across all United Nations Member States, is available upon request here:
