Compare moats
Up to three covered companies, band by band. Every call is a curated editorial judgment, never a disclosed figure — and every band carries its cited basis.
| Arm Holdings | Digital Realty Trust | |
|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | wide Arm's FY2026 20-F states it "maintained market share in the mobile applications processor market of greater than 99% for many years," and describes the Arm platform as "the most pervasive architecture in the world," with "more than 350 billion Arm-based chips reported as shipped cumulatively" as of March 31, 2026 — a durable, dominant position. | narrow The FY2025 10-K's own competitive record cuts both ways. Item 1 says a "high-quality, highly interconnected global portfolio such as ours could not be easily replicated today on a cost-competitive basis," yet Item 1A concedes that competitors have "significantly greater financial, marketing and other resources and more ready access to capital" and that as rivals keep developing space, "rental rates may be reduced or we may face delays in leasing." A durable advantage that its own filing says new supply can price against is bounded, not unassailable. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip Per the 20-F, Arm's advantage rests on its proprietary CPU architecture (ISA), which "is essentially a common language for software developers" and "sets the foundation for a large library of compatible software," reinforced by switching costs: customers "likely would incur significant costs in switching to competitors' architecture." | network effects Item 1 attributes the hard-to-replicate part of the portfolio to connectivity rather than to real estate: "the network density, interconnection infrastructure and connectivity-centric customers in certain of our data centers have led to the organic formation of densely connected data communities that are difficult for competitors to replicate." That community sits on over 232,000 cross connects in over 55 metros, so each network and cloud that lands makes the same building worth more to the next tenant. |
| Leadership | clear leader 20-F: >99% share of the mobile applications processor market for many years and "the most pervasive architecture in the world"; principal contested arena is the fast-growing data-center CPU market, where Arm is still a challenger to x86. | co leader Item 1 claims the title of "the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions," but the Competition section names Equinix and NTT as operators of properties "similar to ours in some of the same metropolitan areas," plus Global Switch and regional operators abroad — a shared top tier on the company's own telling, not a solitary one. |
| Pricing power | strong GAAP gross margin was ~98% in FY2026 ($4,799M gross profit on $4,920M revenue), up from 97% (FY2025) and 95% (FY2024), and royalty growth was driven by "an improved mix of products with higher royalty rates per chip, such as Armv9 technology" — evidence of per-chip pricing power. Caveat: the 20-F notes ASPs decline over a chip generation and royalty per chip generally falls as volume rises. | strong FY2025 renewals signed re-priced upward in every bucket — +27.0% on greater-than-1 MW space ($146 to $186 per square foot), +4.6% on 0-1 MW ($268 to $280) and +43.0% on other ($49 to $71) — and MD&A expects average aggregate rental rates on 2026 renewals to be positive against the rates currently paid for the same space "on a GAAP basis and on a cash basis." On costs, the filing says utilities expense "is our largest expense category" and that "the vast majority of the expense is passed directly through to our customers," which it credits with significantly mitigating exposure to power-cost increases rather than removing it. The cap: Item 1A warns competitor development could still force rates down. |
| Summary | Arm's durable advantage is its proprietary CPU architecture plus the software ecosystem locked to it: as of March 31, 2026 more than 350 billion Arm-based chips had shipped cumulatively, the platform "supports a global community of more than 22 million developers" and "runs the vast majority of the world's software," which underpins its greater-than-99% share of mobile application processors held "for many years." | Digital Realty rents space, power and connectivity rather than compute: at 2025 year-end its portfolio held 310 data centers and roughly 57.6 million rentable square feet across more than 55 metros in over 30 countries, about 84.7% leased, serving more than 5,000 customers. Two different businesses sit inside that footprint. The greater-than-1 MW wholesale side is a capital-and-power race — 769 MW of projects underway with 64% pre-leased, and land that "could accommodate over 3,500 megawatts of additional data center capacity" — where the 10-K names Equinix, NTT, Global Switch and "various private operators" as rivals and warns that added supply can push rents down. The colocation and interconnection side is the defended half: over 232,000 cross connects and the "densely connected data communities" Item 1 says competitors cannot easily replicate, reinforced by contracts the filing describes as generally running 5-10+ years on large deployments and by improvements "installed at our customers' expense." FY2025 leasing supports that read — renewals signed re-priced +27.0% on greater-than-1 MW space and +4.6% on 0-1 MW — while customer concentration is the offsetting exposure, with the largest customer at roughly 11.7% of annualized recurring revenue. |
| Chain position | Arm licenses the CPU architecture and core IP that sit at the foundation of nearly all mobile SoCs and a growing share of AI/cloud data-center CPUs (CSP in-house Grace/Graviton-class designs and Arm's own AGI data-center CPU), placing it upstream of much of the AI compute stack. | Landlord to the AI stack — sells the space, power and interconnection that cloud, network and enterprise tenants run compute in (Oracle, IBM, Meta Platforms, AT&T, Comcast and Lumen are among the customers named in Item 1), with roughly 2.9 GW of total in-place IT capacity. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.42 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.17 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |