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.
| ASML | Applied Digital | Lam Research | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | wide ASML's FY2025 20-F states it "is currently the world's only manufacturer of EUV lithography systems" — an effective monopoly on the extreme-ultraviolet tools required to pattern leading-edge logic and memory chips. | none The FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-07-29) shows contracted revenue, not a demonstrated competitive edge. About 1,410 MW is leased under 15-year take-or-pay, non-cancellable base terms worth about $36.2 billion, but only about 100 MW of the roughly 1.5 GW that is contracted and either operating or under construction was operating and earning revenue at May 31, 2026, and Item 1A says "lessees may have the right to terminate applicable leases if there are significant delays in construction." Item 1A also concedes "We do not have the resources to compete with larger providers of similar products or services at this time," and the Competition section names 13 power-advantaged developers the company competes with. Signed leases give revenue visibility, but the filing does not show a durable advantage. | wide The FY2026 10-K competition section describes tool-level qualification lock-in as the structural fact of the industry: 'semiconductor manufacturers must make a substantial investment to qualify and integrate new capital equipment into semiconductor production lines. As a result, once a semiconductor manufacturer has selected a particular supplier's equipment and qualified it for production, the manufacturer generally maintains that selection for that specific production application and technology node as long as the supplier's products demonstrate performance to specification in the installed base.' The filing then sizes what that incumbency is worth: of 23,232,690 thousand dollars of FY2026 revenue, 8,347,202 thousand - about 36% - was customer-support-related revenue and other, which the same document defines as 'sales of customer services, spares, upgrades, and non-leading-edge equipment' sold back into the installed base. A qualified position plus a third of revenue annuitised against it is a durable barrier rather than a cyclical one. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip The durable advantage rests on decades of proprietary technology and IP — the 20-F describes ASML's April 2025 1,000-watt EUV light source as "built on 25 years of engineering advancements" — reinforced by an exclusive arrangement with Carl Zeiss SMT as its "sole supplier" of the critical optics no rival can source. | none The 10-K claims three advantages: power-advantaged sites (it believes securing power and interconnection ahead of demand is 'the principal constraint on new HPC capacity and a core differentiator for us from many of our competitors'), a standardized 'franchise-style' design, and hyperscaler master service and master telecom service agreements 'that are difficult to obtain.' The filing does not show any of them to be durable. Its Competition section says competition 'centers on securing and developing sites with access to large-scale, reliable, and cost-competitive power and interconnection' and names 13 power-advantaged developers going after the same leases, and Item 1A concedes it lacks the resources to compete with larger providers. Signed leases are take-or-pay and non-cancellable, so a tenant leaving for convenience owes 'the full remaining contractual value,' but that is contractual lock-in on each lease rather than a moat source, so no moat type is assigned. | switching costs The 10-K grounds the advantage in the cost of requalification, not in scale or patents: a customer that has qualified a competitor's tool is hard to win, and conversely Lam's own qualified positions persist for that application and node. The same section adds that the company must keep serving 'our installed base of customers through the delivery of high-quality and cost-efficient spare parts', naming the installed base as the asset being defended. |
| Leadership | clear leader Effectively 100% of the EUV market as the world's only EUV system maker; in the older DUV segment it "compete[s] primarily with Canon and Nikon" yet remains the leading supplier. | behind The 10-K makes no leadership claim and gives no ranking or share figure. Item 1A concedes "We do not have the resources to compete with larger providers of similar products or services at this time" and that some rivals have "substantially greater liquidity and financial resources than we do." Its Competition section places APLD against established operators (Digital Realty, Equinix), hyperscalers that build their own capacity, independent developers and 13 named power-advantaged developers (IREN, Cipher Digital, TeraWulf, Hut 8, Riot, CleanSpark, HIVE, Core Scientific, Bitdeer, Galaxy Digital, Fermi, Keel Infrastructure, MARA). | co leader The 10-K claims position but not primacy: 'We believe we are in a strong position with our leadership and expertise in deposition, etch, and clean markets.' The same document names Applied Materials as primary competitor in deposition and Applied Materials, Hitachi and Tokyo Electron as primary competitors in etch, which is a shared-leadership structure rather than a clear single leader. |
| Pricing power | strong FY2025 gross margin of 52.8%, up 1.5 percentage points year over year, with management guiding toward 56-60% by 2030 — consistent with monopoly pricing power on EUV tools. | weak Item 1A says "Due to the limited number of hyperscalers, we expect that a limited number of customers will continue to account for a high percentage of our revenue for the foreseeable future," and that if customers' equipment usage declines or they discontinue use of its facilities, APLD "may be compelled to lower our lease prices in some instances or risk losing a significant customer." One customer was 59% of FY2026 revenue from continuing operations. Take-or-pay, non-cancellable terms protect contracted revenue over the base term, and Note 19 reports a $39.1M HPC Hosting segment profit on $385.3M of segment revenue in FY2026, but those terms are agreed with a small group of concentrated buyers. | moderate Real but bounded, and the filing is explicit that the recent gain was mix rather than price. Gross margin as a percent of total revenue rose 180 basis points to 50.5% in fiscal 2026 from 48.7% in fiscal 2025 (gross margin of 11,725,308 thousand dollars on revenue of 23,232,690 thousand, against 8,979,059 on 18,435,591; 7,052,791 on 14,905,386 in fiscal 2024), and the MD&A attributes that: 'Gross margin as a percentage of revenue increased in fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025 largely due to favorable customer mix, partially offset by aluminum and steel tariff-related spend.' Against it, the same filing says manufacturers evaluate suppliers on 'overall cost of ownership', that the spares business competes with third-party spare parts providers, and that the customer list is a handful of very large buyers (Micron, Samsung, SK hynix and TSMC named as the most significant customers). |
| Summary | ASML is the sole producer of EUV lithography systems, the only tools able to pattern the most advanced logic and memory nodes, with a roadmap "intended to drive affordable scaling to 2030 and beyond" and a High-NA EUV (TWINSCAN EXE) platform on which customers "had run more than 400,000 wafers" by end-2025. That dominance is protected by 25 years of accumulated engineering IP and an exclusive lock on Carl Zeiss SMT optics that competitors cannot replicate. | Applied Digital designs, builds and operates purpose-built, liquid-cooled HPC data centers, which it calls 'AI factories', and leases the capacity to CoreWeave and investment-grade hyperscalers. At May 31, 2026 its 10-K lists five campuses (Polaris Forge 1-3 and Delta Forge 1-2) with about 1,410 MW contracted under roughly 15-year take-or-pay, non-cancellable leases worth about $36.2 billion over the base terms. The filing claims three sources of advantage: it controls power-advantaged sites, it uses a standardized 'franchise-style' design built to deliver about 150 MW in about 14 to 18 months, and it holds hyperscaler master agreements that are 'difficult to obtain.' The same document shows how early the company is. About 100 MW was operating and earning revenue. One customer was 59% of FY2026 revenue from continuing operations. It competes with Digital Realty, Equinix, hyperscalers that build their own capacity and 13 named power-advantaged developers, and it concedes that it lacks the resources to compete with larger providers. Signed leases give long-dated revenue visibility, but the filing does not show a durable competitive advantage. | Lam sells etch, deposition and clean tools into a per-node, per-application qualification process that its own 10-K says customers generally do not revisit once a supplier is qualified. The result is two linked economics, and the FY2026 filing splits them: systems revenue of 14,885,488 thousand dollars and customer-support-related revenue and other of 8,347,202 thousand, on total revenue of 23,232,690 thousand. The second line is the installed-base annuity - services, spares, upgrades and refurbished Reliant tools sold wherever Lam already holds the process step. The 10-K names Applied Materials as the primary competitor in dielectric and metals deposition, ASM International and Wonik IPS in ALD/PECVD, and Applied Materials, Hitachi and Tokyo Electron in etch, so this is shared rather than sole leadership. The live erosion risk is policy, not a rival product: China was 34% of revenue in both fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2025 (7,859,811 thousand dollars in FY2026, the largest single region), and the filing states that U.S. export controls on sales to customers in China, including entity listings of multiple customers, restrict sales of equipment and spare parts by U.S. suppliers and thereby 'provides an advantage to our international competitors that are not subject to these restrictions'. |
| Chain position | Upstream chokepoint of the AI chip supply chain: every leading-edge logic/DRAM wafer for AI accelerators is patterned on ASML EUV tools, making it the single indispensable equipment supplier to TSMC, Samsung and Intel. | Developer and landlord of power-advantaged, liquid-cooled AI data-center capacity, leased long-term to CoreWeave and investment-grade hyperscalers. | Upstream wafer-fabrication-equipment supplier; the 10-K names Micron, Samsung, SK hynix and TSMC as its most significant customers across FY2024-FY2026, so Lam sits one step above the memory and foundry capacity that AI compute depends on. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.42 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.30 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |