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- Ep 732: The State of the AI Race. Who will win in 2026: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google Or Anthropic (Start Here Series Vol 12)
Ep 732: The State of the AI Race. Who will win in 2026: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google Or Anthropic (Start Here Series Vol 12)
NVIDIA Invests $26 Billion Into Open AI Models, Microsoft releases Copilot Health, Google adds AI into Google Maps and more.
Everyday AI
March 12, 2026
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Today in Everyday AI
8 minute read
🎙 Daily Podcast Episode: OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic are all racing to dominate AI. In Episode 12 of our Start Here Series, we break down why the real winner in 2026 may come down to something bigger than models. Give today’s show a watch/read/listen to find out.
🕵️‍♂️ Fresh Finds: Runway launching 'Labs' for new AI video creations, Claude links Excel and Powerpoint, Google opens new AI hub in London and more. Read on for Fresh Finds.
đź—ž Byte Sized Daily AI News: NVIDIA Invests $26 Billion Into Open AI Models, Microsoft releases Copilot Health, Google adds AI into Google Maps and more. Read on for Byte Sized News.
💪 Leverage AI: The AI race in 2026 is moving too fast for a single winner — and understanding who’s leading where matters more than ever. Keep reading for that!
↩️ Don’t miss out: Miss our last newsletter? We covered: Meta Unveils New AI Chips, The U.S. Senate Approves AI Chatbots for Official Work, NVIDIA Announces a Major AI Infrastructure Deal, and more Check it here!
Ep 732: The State of the AI Race. Who will win in 2026: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google Or Anthropic (Start Here Series Vol 12)
Who will win the AI race in 2026? 🏇
Will Google finally catch OpenAI in users?
Has Claude surpassed ChatGPT in capabilities?
And.... how can your company avoid the AI battles and just pick its lane?
So many AI questions. We've got your AI answers.
As part of our ongoing 'Start Here Series' we tackle one of the most important questions for most enterprises: Who will win the AI race and how do you decide?
Also on the pod today:
• Chatbot era officially over 🤖
• OpenAI hits 900M weekly users 🚀
• Anthropic’s Claude dominating coding agents 💻
It’ll be worth your 42 minutes:
Listen on our site:
Click to listen
Subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast platform
Listen on:
Here’s our favorite AI finds from across the web:
New AI Tool Spotlight – Naoma is your AI video sales agent that runs personalized demo calls 24/7 in any language, Needle Helps you Create workflow templates and earn every time someone runs them, Prava enables your AI to make secure, encrypted payments using tokenized cards, and wallet in minutes.
Claude for Excel and Powerpoint — Claude now links your Excel and PowerPoint work, making tasks smoother than ever. Curious how it works?
Meta Anti-Scam Tools — Meta is rolling out smarter AI tools and tighter verification to catch scammers faster. Click to Learn More
Google AI — Use simple language to command your spreadsheets? Yes please.
Runway Labs Launched — Runway is launching Labs to invent AI video apps that haven't existed yet. Want in?
OpenAI API Agents — OpenAI’s Responses API lets agents run real code and fetch live data, not just chat. Curious how far agents can actually go now?
Grammarly Lawsuit — Superhuman’s Grammarly-powered AI mimicked famous writers, triggering a lawsuit. Want to know why it blew up?
AI Hubs - A new Google hub near London’s King’s Cross aims to shape the future of safe AI.
Agent Studies — AI agents got tricked into leaking secrets and wiping servers when set loose with real-world access. See how.
1. Nvidia Goes All-In on AI Models with a $26B Power Play 🤯
Nvidia just stunned the AI world by disclosing a $26 billion investment into open-weight AI models, marking its boldest pivot yet and signaling a direct challenge to former customers like OpenAI and Anthropic.
According to new SEC filings reported by Wired, the chip giant is betting big on releasing models with public weights, shifting from being the "shovel seller" to a major gold miner in the AI rush.
2. Microsoft Unveils Copilot Health to Tackle Medical Data Overload 🧑‍⚕️
Microsoft just launched Copilot Health, a new AI-powered feature in its Copilot chatbot designed to help users make sense of their medical records and wearable data.
The tech giant is positioning this tool as a smarter health assistant, not a digital doctor, offering insights and prepping users for real-life appointments without crossing into diagnosis or treatment territory. Copilot Health keeps your information private and separate from regular chats, with easy options to delete your data.
3. NVIDIA Launches Nemotron 3 Super, Raising the Bar for Agentic AI đź§
NVIDIA has just introduced Nemotron 3 Super, a massive open AI model built to handle complex, multi-agent systems, and it's available now on top cloud and AI platforms.
Boasting a huge 1-million-token context window and a hybrid architecture, the model claims top marks for efficiency and accuracy among its peers. This marks a clear shift as industries look to move beyond simple chatbots to more advanced, autonomous AI agents.
4. Google Maps Gets Gemini AI Upgrade 🗺️
Google is rolling out its Gemini AI tech to Maps, debuting a new “Ask Maps” chatbot that lets users ask highly specific questions beyond basic navigation. This feature launches today in the U.S. and India on mobile, aiming to make planning and exploring more conversational and personalized than ever.
With over 2 billion users, Google is betting big on AI to keep Maps ahead of rivals and deepen user engagement. While ads aren’t part of the new feature yet, Google isn’t ruling them out as it seeks to finally monetize its wildly popular mapping service.
5. OpenClaw Competitor? Perplexity Unveils Local AI Agent for Your Mac 🖥️
Perplexity just announced "Personal Computer," a new AI agent tool that transforms a spare Mac into a locally run digital assistant, promising users more privacy and control.
Unlike cloud-based solutions, this system runs 24/7 on your network, has access to your files and apps, and lets you monitor or reverse its actions with an audit trail and kill switch. The tool isn’t out yet—interested users must join a waitlist for early access, with no public launch date set.
6. Congress Demands Answers on AI in Iran Strike 🪖
In a dramatic move Thursday morning, over 120 Democratic lawmakers pressed the Pentagon for details on how artificial intelligence factored into a U.S. strike that killed at least 170 civilians, mostly children, at an Iranian school last month. The letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spotlights concerns over outdated intelligence and the potential use of AI systems like Maven Smart System in selecting deadly targets during the escalating U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
Lawmakers are demanding answers by March 20, including whether humans actually reviewed and approved AI-generated target lists.
Who’s winning the AI race?
Depends on who you ask and what day it is, TBH.
The state of AI in 2026 is honestly kinda bonkers. Gone are the days of 2024 with slow release cycles and incremental gains.
In today’s AI?
It’s legit step changes weekly from all the big AI labs, which is equally exciting for the possibilities and downright confusing because of the breakneck pace of innovation.
So, which AI model do you choose?
Because the last thing you wanna do is hitch your AI wagon to the wrong LLM horse.
So on today’s show, we zoomed out to give everyone a bird’s eye view of the AI race as it stands today: the pros and cons, the advantages and pitfalls, the good, bad and ugly.
Need some guidance moving forward? We gotchu.
Let’s dive in on the big 3 things you need to know.
There is no single AI race anymore. That framing is already outdated.
OpenAI is crushing consumer mindshare. Microsoft still owns a huge chunk of enterprise gravity because it sits inside the software stack most companies already use. Google is the wildcard with crazy breadth and dominates multimodality. Anthropic keeps punching above its weight in high-value technical work.
That matters because too many companies are still trying to pick one vendor for life like they’re drafting a franchise QB. Wrong.
Yes, we still recommend picking a single player for your day-to-day AI Operating System. But that doesn’t certain teams or tasks can’t live outside of your main choice.
This is not about crowning a king. It’s about matching the right model to the right workload before your team hardcodes bad assumptions into the business. One model for broad daily work. Another for deep technical execution. Another because governance matters more than raw horsepower.
That’s the edge. Not being loyal. Being modular.
Try This:
Look at your top three AI workflows right now.
Not your dream use cases. Your actual ones.
Then ask what each one really needs most: speed, depth, scale, governance, or ease of use.
If you’re forcing one vendor to do all of it, there’s a decent chance your strategy is already leaking value.
2. The chatbot era is dead ⚡
The old AI conversation was basically, “Which chatbot should we use?” Cute. That worked when AI mostly answered questions and helped write emails.
But that era is cooked.
Now the real question is which company can help you bring your data, systems, docs, spreadsheets, browsers, permissions, and workflows into one agentic layer that actually does work. Not just chats about work. Does it.
That is a MUCH bigger deal than benchmark bragging rights.
Because once you start thinking in agents, not chatbots, the buying criteria changes fast. You stop obsessing over who topped a leaderboard this week. You start caring about workflow fit, system access, reliability, and whether the thing can survive contact with your messy org chart.
That’s the 2026 shift in one sentence. AI is moving from assistant to operating layer.
Try This:
Grab one recurring process that eats up too many human hours every week.
Map the inputs. Map the approvals. Map the actions. Map the output.
Then ask where an agent could own part of that flow without creating a security or quality-control nightmare.
That’s the work now, fam. Not “better prompting.”
3. Follow the coding war closely 🚀
Even if you do not care about software development, you should absolutely care about the coding race.
Why?
Because coding is one of the first places AI is showing obvious, measurable enterprise ROI. Which means the vendors winning there are not just building dev tools. They are stress-testing the future of agentic work.
Tools like Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Google’s growing pile of coding products are all proving the same thing. Can an AI system reason through ambiguity, use tools, complete multi-step tasks, and produce something useful inside a live environment?
If it can do that in code, it can prolly do that in finance, ops, research, and internal knowledge work next.
That is the unlocked value here. The coding war is not some niche nerd side quest. It is the clearest preview of who might own enterprise execution when AI stops being a chatbot and starts being a coworker.
Try This:
Ask your engineering leader which AI coding tool is saving real time today.
Then ask the better question.
What does that tool reveal about which vendor is best positioned to handle messy, multi-step business work outside engineering?
That answer is gonna tell you way more about the future than one flashy benchmark ever will.
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