Are AI Coding Tools Actually Merging? Here's What's Happening in 2026

If you searched "ai coding tools merging" this week and expected acquisition news — Cursor buying Claude Code, or OpenAI absorbing Anthropic — that's not what happened. What's actually happening is more structurally interesting. The real story Cursor, Claude Code, and OpenAI Codex are converging into a layered stack — not through corporate deals, but through workflow convergence and shared protocols (MCP and A2A). Each tool is settling into a distinct role: Claude Code → Orc...