Experiments are reported on the annealing of Se+ implanted semi‐insulating GaAs by a laser pulse or an electron beam pulse. Laser annealing was accomplished by a ruby laser pulse (λ=0.694μm, tp?15ns); an electron beam with an average electron energy of ∠20keV and a pulse duration of ∠0.1μs was employed for electron beam annealing. The implanted and annealed samples were analyzed electrically with the standard Van der Pauw type of resistivity measurements. In some cases, differential Hall‐effect measurements were used for determining the electron concentration profiles. The results indicate that after both types of annealing, better activation of Se+ ions occurred in the layers that were amorphous following implantation, when compared to the layers that remained crystalline after implantation.