NVIDIA, Google, Cursor, Cognition, OpenAI, and Anthropic and the Vertically Coupled AI Stack

This IDC Market Note examines how the rise of generative and agentic AI is driving tighter integration across the technology stack. NVIDIA, Google, Cursor, Cognition, OpenAI, and Anthropic are each building vertically coupled architectures that align models, infrastructure, and solution layers. Tighter coupling can improve accuracy, performance, latency, cost, reliability, and operational control. This document examines how each vendor approaches vertical coupling from a different starting point and how enterprises should evaluate these stacks based on measurable outcomes.