In June, a team of student researchers at King Saud University presented their breakthrough — a Saudi-built artificial intelligence agent named Mantiq.

Mantiq successfully solved 84 out of 120 abstract puzzles and scored a 70 percent accuracy rate on the global Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus benchmark in a challenge widely recognized among leading artificial general intelligence researchers around the world.

The team behind this achievement includes Abdullah Al-Refai, a software engineering student at Prince Mohammed Bin Fahd University in Dhahran who rebuilt his future line by line, code by code, after being expelled from university.

This story showcases a growing generation determined to push boundaries in the most advanced frontiers of AI, demonstrating that brilliance can emerge from anywhere, including small research groups in Saudi Arabia.

While major investments in emerging technologies dominate headlines, stories like Al-Refai's reveal a parallel transformation happening from the ground up, driven by students, self-learners, and quiet researchers working after hours in labs and dorm rooms.