Big Tech Power Rankings
february 2026
WHAT IS THIS
BTPR
a monthly digest of the biggest technology companies shaping the world. either the meshugaas today is a bubble ready to burst and they're all idiots, or AI will take over and make everyone else into idiots, or neither will happen and i'm the idiot. whichever it is: follow along!
WHAT IS THIS
BTPR
a monthly digest of the biggest technology companies shaping the world. either the meshugaas today is a bubble ready to burst and they're all idiots, or AI will take over and make everyone else into idiots, or neither will happen and i'm the idiot. whichever it is: follow along!
ANTHROPIC
clean. started the year with a lead in every market that doesn't require having a lot of users. dario took a break from screaming from the rooftops "everyone needs to STOP building more AI, including me!" to give sam a flat tire and laugh at him falling over trying to put the shoe back on. also went, "oh ya claude can do lawyer stuff" and accidentally tanked the entire saas market. game is far from over, but they made the opening drive look easy.
ANTHROPIC
clean. started the year with a lead in every market that doesn't require having a lot of users. dario took a break from screaming from the rooftops "everyone needs to STOP building more AI, including me!" to give sam a flat tire and laugh at him falling over trying to put the shoe back on. also went, "oh ya claude can do lawyer stuff" and accidentally tanked the entire saas market. game is far from over, but they made the opening drive look easy.
OPENAI
sam successfully spent 2025 hitching everyone's valuations to openai's wagon, which means the money faucet won't stop any time soon. this works out great for a business whose current strategy looks like an attempt to be the exception to the maxim: "if you try to please everyone, you please no one." the product launches will continue until data center capacity improves.
OPENAI
sam successfully spent 2025 hitching everyone's valuations to openai's wagon, which means the money faucet won't stop any time soon. this works out great for a business whose current strategy looks like an attempt to be the exception to the maxim: "if you try to please everyone, you please no one." the product launches will continue until data center capacity improves.
right now google is the bridesmaid, not the bride in multiple dimensions: behind anthropic in enterprise, behind openai in consumer, behind nvidia in hardware. like josh allen and the bills, we love to see sundar and the googlers roaring back from behind, but they just can't seem to actually win it all. maybe they'll finally figure it out and get to the SB, or maybe apple will pull up like bo nix and knock them out again.
right now google is the bridesmaid, not the bride in multiple dimensions: behind anthropic in enterprise, behind openai in consumer, behind nvidia in hardware. like josh allen and the bills, we love to see sundar and the googlers roaring back from behind, but they just can't seem to actually win it all. maybe they'll finally figure it out and get to the SB, or maybe apple will pull up like bo nix and knock them out again.
NVIDIA
the black leather jacket economy that is the ai boom—where all the money invested and spent ends up going to nvidia, so jensen huang can buy himself more black leather jackets—continues humming along nicely. but cracks are showing: turns out sam and jensen making a joint statement about investments is less reliable than lebron james saying a book is his favorite.
NVIDIA
the black leather jacket economy that is the ai boom—where all the money invested and spent ends up going to nvidia, so jensen huang can buy himself more black leather jackets—continues humming along nicely. but cracks are showing: turns out sam and jensen making a joint statement about investments is less reliable than lebron james saying a book is his favorite.
MICROSOFT
this company is like that guy in the friend group who only talks about how fun college was, and makes the same jokes from like 10 years ago that you sort of chuckle at halfheartedly out of pity. like yeah, man, that stuff was great, but we’ve kinda moved on. change it up, have a new experience or two. adapt, my guy.
MICROSOFT
this company is like that guy in the friend group who only talks about how fun college was, and makes the same jokes from like 10 years ago that you sort of chuckle at halfheartedly out of pity. like yeah, man, that stuff was great, but we’ve kinda moved on. change it up, have a new experience or two. adapt, my guy.
APPLE
like last year's panthers, apple lost most of their games but still made the playoffs. the iphone is apparently good enough to be basically the entire team, so tbd if they center the whole strategy around it or bring in some help. either way, what should've been rock bottom has ended up more like just a bad day, so the potential is there. early news says there are siri delays; tim apple just set up a polymarket account.
APPLE
like last year's panthers, apple lost most of their games but still made the playoffs. the iphone is apparently good enough to be basically the entire team, so tbd if they center the whole strategy around it or bring in some help. either way, what should've been rock bottom has ended up more like just a bad day, so the potential is there. early news says there are siri delays; tim apple just set up a polymarket account.
META
you can lose by not playing, and you can lose by sucking. guess which one is meta? (it's the sucking one.) zuck has claimed his next domain as "personal superintelligence," which started out as a pornbot chat feature and is now tools to make ad companies find you better. the fact that they can just keep turning up the ads dial to get their revenue growth makes this acceptable to investors, but nobody is taking them seriously in the AI race anymore. a. wang leaves and meta buys cursor within 10 months.
META
you can lose by not playing, and you can lose by sucking. guess which one is meta? (it's the sucking one.) zuck has claimed his next domain as "personal superintelligence," which started out as a pornbot chat feature and is now tools to make ad companies find you better. the fact that they can just keep turning up the ads dial to get their revenue growth makes this acceptable to investors, but nobody is taking them seriously in the AI race anymore. a. wang leaves and meta buys cursor within 10 months.
ELON CORP
the four horsemen of the elonpocalypse: tesla, spacex, xai, x. since we’re 3/4ths of the way to them being one company, and that last fourth can’t be far off, we’re grouping them together now. so, how are they doing? – tesla, an EV company, is pivoting to robotics. investors love the idea of evolving from a good car selling business to a single-city taxi service and not selling humanoid robots! – spacex, a rocket company, is pivoting from exploring mars to catapulting gpu satellites from the moon. likelihood of success? your guess is as good as the writers of Armageddon (1998). reminder: katy perry has been farther into space than elon has. – xai, an AI model provider, continues its charter as 4chan’s LLM. – x, once a digital town square, has pivoted to being a forum for elon to claim he’s cool enough to be a pedophile without needing help from jeffrey epstein.
ELON CORP
the four horsemen of the elonpocalypse: tesla, spacex, xai, x. since we’re 3/4ths of the way to them being one company, and that last fourth can’t be far off, we’re grouping them together now. so, how are they doing? – tesla, an EV company, is pivoting to robotics. investors love the idea of evolving from a good car selling business to a single-city taxi service and not selling humanoid robots! – spacex, a rocket company, is pivoting from exploring mars to catapulting gpu satellites from the moon. likelihood of success? your guess is as good as the writers of Armageddon (1998). reminder: katy perry has been farther into space than elon has. – xai, an AI model provider, continues its charter as 4chan’s LLM. – x, once a digital town square, has pivoted to being a forum for elon to claim he’s cool enough to be a pedophile without needing help from jeffrey epstein.