Twelve live battlegrounds where established incumbents meet AI challengers, mapped to where each fight sits in the AI stack.
Selected participants · October 2026 edition · Evidence checked through September 30, 2026. Independent and unsponsored: no company pays to appear in these battlegrounds. Announcements are not outcomes.
Value is realized at the top, but created and enabled across every layer below.
The result the customer funds, renews or expands
Who can demonstrate that the promised business value occurred?
The coordination of work across capabilities
Who decides how the work runs and how exceptions are resolved?
The environment serving a business or industry domain
Which platform rules shape the role available to us?
The intelligence used within products and work
What happens if a model provider changes cost, access or scope?
The information and connections needed to act
Can the required context move if we change providers?
The operating infrastructure and protections
Which dependencies constrain continuity or replacement?
The physical capacity supporting the system
What limits the capacity on which everything else depends?
A map of control points, not a ranking of companies.
Nine of twelve battlegrounds are fought at the workflow, agents and orchestration layer.
| Battleground | Stack layer → | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Who Decides Where AI Gets Built? Emerging | Contested | Adjacent | |||||
| 02 Who Controls AI Compute? | Adjacent | Contested | Adjacent | ||||
| 03 Who Decides What the Data Means? | Contested | Adjacent | |||||
| 04 Who Controls the Future of Driving? | Contested | Contested | Contested | ||||
| 05 Who Controls the Coding Workflow? | Contested | Adjacent | Contested | ||||
| 06 Who Owns the Front Door to Creative Work? | Contested | Contested | |||||
| 07 Who Controls the Procure-to-Pay Workflow? | Contested | Contested | |||||
| 08 Who Owns the Clinical Encounter? | Contested | Contested | |||||
| 09 Who Gets Paid: the Seat or the Outcome? | Contested | Contested | Contested | ||||
| 10 Who Does the Customer-Service Work? | Adjacent | Contested | Contested | ||||
| 11 Who Owns the Financial Advice Relationship? | Contested | Contested | |||||
| 12 Who Builds the Last Mile? Emerging | Adjacent | Contested | Contested | ||||
Emerging Battleground 01 · Layer 1
Permission to build: power, land, water and public consent
Which of your AI plans assumes capacity that hasn't been permitted yet?
Battleground 02 · Layer 2
Who supplies the compute AI runs on
Which strengths from the last inning will slow you down in the next?
Battleground 03 · Layer 3
Governing what data means to AI agents
Who in your company approves what a word like "customer" means?
Battleground 04 · Layers 4 + 5 + 6
How vehicles, software and driving come together
What should you preserve, build, access or co-develop?
Battleground 05 · Layers 4 + 6
From a request to working software
Which capabilities must you control, and which dependencies can you govern?
Battleground 06 · Layers 4 + 6
Where creative work starts, and where it's finished
When your supplier becomes the front door, which rooms must you own?
Battleground 07 · Layers 5 + 6
From an employee's request to an enterprise commitment
Does agreement in your meetings become commitment after them?
Battleground 08 · Layers 5 + 6
Documentation, clinical intelligence and accountability
When the platform builds your feature, what makes you more than the feature?
Battleground 09 · Layers 5 + 6 + 7
Getting paid for the work, not the seat
Is your record quarter hiding a weakening position?
Battleground 10 · Layers 6 + 7
Who, or what, does the work, and who answers for it
Are you designing work, or still counting heads?
Battleground 11 · Layers 6 + 7
Turning a customer's need into trusted advice
What will AI prepare, and what must a human own?
Emerging Battleground 12 · Layers 6 + 7
Turning deployment services into repeatable software
Which of your services could become software, and who gets there first?
From the book
These battlegrounds are drawn from the forthcoming book AI Battlegrounds: Incumbents, Challengers, and the Rise of the Recursive Enterprise, by Ron Wastal.
About the bookRAW PEC helps software leaders see where they're exposed, where to partner, and how to prove value at the top of the stack.
