As 2026 begins, the AI world has already been hit with two blockbuster announcements.
First, Anthropic took drastic measures to ban third-party command-line interfaces (CLIs) and “wrapper” software from accessing personal Claude subscription accounts (Pro/Max). The official intent is clear: to plug the loophole where users were arbitraging low-cost subscriptions against high-value API usage, and to consolidate this efficient coding experience into an exclusive moat for their official tool, Claude Code.
Close on its heels, Apple officially confirmed a deep partnership with Google. Gemini serves as the cornerstone for Siri and Apple Intelligence, handling backend reasoning and logic. This signifies that in Apple’s AI landscape, Google has secured its status as “infrastructure”—thanks to its profound accumulation of cloud computing and TPU computing power—while OpenAI’s role has been repositioned as an optional “premium add-on.”
These two seemingly unrelated events reveal a significant trend for the AI industry in 2026: as the marginal returns on model capability diminish, raw “intelligence” is no longer the sole barrier to entry. Companies are now aggressively constructing their own differentiated moats.
Anthropic has chosen “vertical integration”, cementing model capabilities into an irreplaceable workflow experience by tightly bundling Claude Code with its subscription plans. Google, on the other hand, has won through “economies of scale”, leveraging the extreme cost control and stability of its TPU clusters to secure a ticket to Apple’s billion-user ecosystem.
In 2025, we were still frequently switching subscriptions based on “which model is smarter.” While each service had its merits, they were highly substitutable. Entering 2026, the window for this kind of “homogeneous competition” is rapidly closing.
In the cash-burning race of AI, time is running out for the “good but mediocre” middle ground. Whether you possess extreme cost advantages (like Google) or an exclusive, killer workflow (like Anthropic), you must possess a “trait” that competitors cannot easily replicate.
I currently subscribe to four different AI services. I believe that before the year is out, retaining just two will likely suffice for all my needs.
The main theme of 2026 will no longer be the numbers game of benchmark leaderboards. Instead, it will be about providing a compelling reason for existence that truly resonates with both business and consumer users—whether through price barriers or ultimate user experiences.
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