Washington wakes: power struggle over AI

February 2026 was the month that AI's transformation stopped being an insider story and cascaded across groups — from developers embracing a new era of autonomous agents to Wall Street panic-selling stocks in AI's crosshairs to Washington's first real power struggle over who controls the technology. This KPMG-sponsored monthly recap puts a fine point on how the rise of agentic AI, the SaaS apocalypse, and the Anthropic-Pentagon conflict all connect as part of one sweeping shift. In the headlines: the latest on Anthropic versus the US government including Claude's reported use in the Iran strikes, and OpenAI's record $110 billion fundraise.

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