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.
| Cerebras Systems | IREN | ServiceNow | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow One-of-a-kind silicon sold to very few buyers: the IPO prospectus discloses G42 at 24.0% of 2025 revenue (85.0% in 2024), MBZUAI at 62.0% of 2025 revenue, and a December 2025 MRA with OpenAI representing 'a substantial portion of our projected revenues over the next several years' — against a competitive field the same document names as NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, hyperscaler accelerators and the major clouds. | none The FY2026 10-K (filed 2026-08-27) shows IREN holds an input the industry competes on: it names 'access to secured and energized power' first among what it believes are the principal competitive factors in its industry, and reports 'executed grid connection agreements, letters of agreement or equivalents representing approximately 5GW of total power capacity' in the United States, Canada, Spain and Australia as of June 30, 2026. It does not claim an advantage over rivals in that input. It says 'Certain competitors may have access to more competitively priced power, a greater access to power and a better capacity to timely secure grid connections,' and 'Many of our competitors have greater financial, technical or commercial resources, longer cloud operating histories or larger customer bases, compared to us.' Operating AI Cloud Services capacity was approximately 40MW at June 30, 2026, and the stored XBRL fundamentals from this 10-K show an FY2026 operating loss of about $1,046.7M on revenue of about $707.0M, so no durable advantage is yet demonstrated. | narrow The FY2025 10-K shows RPO of $28.2 billion, up 27%; customers above $5 million of ACV at 603, 502 and 420 as of December 31 2025, 2024 and 2023; revenue of $13,278 million, up 21%; and a 98% renewal rate for three years. That rate cannot prove durability: the filing computes it excluding "changes in price or users," says it "does not reflect increased or decreased purchases," and warns "period-to-period comparison of renewal rates may not be meaningful." The company also calls its market "characterized by fragmentation, low barriers to entry." Real switching costs plus compounding large accounts support narrow; wide would need durability proof this filing lacks. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip Wafer-scale integration is the moat's substance: the prospectus contrasts the WSE-3's 4 trillion transistors on 46,225 mm² of silicon with NVIDIA's B200 at 208 billion on roughly 1,600 mm² — a commercial chip category with one occupant. | none The FY2026 10-K's asserted advantage is control from owning its data centers, 'including the associated land, grid connections and substations', which it believes allows it 'to benefit from more sustainable cash flows and operational flexibility relative to operators that rely upon third-party colocation services or short-term land leases'. Its only scale language is a belief that its 'procurement scale, deployment experience and direct control over the data center layer' lets it bring new compute into service 'rapidly and at scale', a deployment-speed claim, and it 'generally target[s]' regions with 'low-cost and attractive renewable energy sources', a siting target rather than a demonstrated cost position. It does not claim a cost or scale lead: it says 'Many of our competitors are larger, have longer operating histories and significantly greater resources than we do' and that certain competitors 'may have access to more competitively priced power, a greater access to power and a better capacity to timely secure grid connections.' There is no network effect or lock-in either, since existing contracts have 'terms ranging from month to month up to five years'. No enumerated moat source is grounded. | switching costs The binding force is architecture and configuration. The filing describes "a multi-instance architecture that provides each customer with a dedicated application layer and database," an ITOM product that "maintains a single record of all IT configurable items," and products built to "integrate with existing workflows rather than replace them." Once that record and its integrations are configured, replacement becomes a re-platforming program — our inference, as the filing quantifies no switching cost. Not IP: it holds "over 2,000 issued U.S. and foreign patents" but is not "materially dependent on any single patent." Not network effects. |
| Leadership | clear leader Scoped to the category the record supports: wafer-scale integration has no other commercial occupant per the prospectus's own comparison, and the Q2 release claims — attributed, via AMD and AWS partnerships — leadership in disaggregated inference, a technique the prospectus defines. | behind The 10-K lists IREN's competitors as hyperscalers (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud) and specialized AI Cloud Services providers (CoreWeave, Nebius, Crusoe, Lambda, Nscale, SpaceX and others). It says IREN began providing AI Cloud Services in 2024 and cites its 'shorter operating history in AI Cloud Services relative to some competitors', and states 'Some of our competitors have longer operating histories, larger customer bases, more comprehensive IP portfolios and patent protections, more design wins, and greater financial, sales, marketing and distribution resources than we do.' Operating AI Cloud Services capacity was approximately 40MW at June 30, 2026. The filing describes a smaller, later entrant that trails some competitors on operating history, customer base and resources, with its progress so far resting on two anchor contracts (a ~$9.7B five-year Microsoft agreement and a ~$3.4B five-year NVIDIA contract) rather than any claimed category position. | clear leader The call is scoped to IT service management. Apps Run The World's 2024 ITSM ranking (page dated 23 July 2025) places ServiceNow first at 44.4% share, ahead of Atlassian, BMC, GoTo and Ivanti, in an $11.4 billion market where the top ten hold 83.3%. Scale corroborates: about 8,700 customers, 29,187 employees, $13,278 million of revenue, $28.2 billion of RPO. References to "two decades partnering with enterprise customers" and process knowledge "that cannot be readily replicated" are the filing's own characterisation. Outside ITSM it is weaker: one of six Leaders in the 2025 Gartner LCAP quadrant, and tenth of ten in CRM behind Salesforce at 26.1%. |
| Pricing power | moderate The CFO states Q2 'significantly improved core gross and operating margins compared to a year ago' — improving, from a base where three named customers hold most of the revenue and the leverage that comes with it. | weak The 10-K's risk factors state 'Our competitors' products, services and technologies may be cheaper or provide better functionality or features than ours, which has resulted and may in the future result in lower-than-expected selling prices or demand for our products.' They also say long-term contract pricing 'is generally fixed or agreed at the time of contracting', so if market pricing for comparable capacity rises during a contract's term 'we will not benefit from those increases with respect to capacity already committed under our existing long-term contracts', and that if customers suffer a downturn or discontinue its services it 'may be compelled to offer more flexible terms, lower our prices or risk losing a significant customer.' The stored XBRL fundamentals from this 10-K show FY2026 revenue of about $707.0M against an operating loss of about $1,046.7M, so there is no margin record yet that evidences pricing power. | moderate The filing discloses no average selling price, no net revenue retention and no pricing data, and the renewal rate is no proxy — it "does not reflect increased or decreased purchases" and excludes "changes in price or users." Revenue up 21%, the $5 million-plus cohort up about 20% annually and RPO up 27% are all consistent with expansion at flat pricing. Margins cut the other way: subscription gross profit fell to 80% from 82% with no stated cause, and professional services gross loss widened to 5% from 2%. One real lever is that "certain AI and data solutions include a consumption-based pricing component." |
| Summary | Cerebras bet that AI compute should be one enormous chip rather than many small ones — 'quantities of compute and memory never before assembled on a single commercial chip,' avoiding 'the latency and the power-draw induced by the traditional approach,' in the prospectus's words — and is converting that bet into an inference cloud: Q2 2026 cloud revenue grew 281% with 600 MW of data center capacity under contract and $25.4 billion of remaining performance obligations. The concentration that funded the bet is the risk that remains: two related-party Gulf customers were 86% of 2025 revenue between them, with the OpenAI MRA now layered on top. | Per its FY2026 10-K, IREN is a vertically integrated AI Cloud Services platform that owns the data center, compute and software layers, underpinned by executed grid connection agreements, letters of agreement or equivalents representing ~5GW and a further multi-GW development pipeline. Its commercial record is concentrated: a five-year Microsoft agreement (~$9.7B total contract value, Horizon 1 delivered and accepted in August 2026, Horizons 2-4 targeted for delivery in phases in calendar Q4 2026) and a five-year ~$3.4B NVIDIA cloud contract together make up a substantial majority of contracted revenue. It holds NVIDIA Preferred Partner and Exemplar Cloud status (HGX B300 and GB300 NVL72) and a strategic partnership intended to support the deployment over time of up to 5GW of NVIDIA DSX-aligned infrastructure, which the filing cites among arrangements that are non-binding or subject to conditions, with no assurance as to the extent of deployments. Against that, the filing names hyperscaler and specialized competitors (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle, CoreWeave, Nebius, Crusoe, Lambda, Nscale, SpaceX), many of which it says have greater resources, customers that can use or develop their own solutions, and possible delays to Texas energization from changes to ERCOT's Batch Zero procedures, so the power position is not a demonstrated advantage over rivals and its value depends on execution. | ServiceNow sells a workflow platform that sits on top of, rather than replaces, an enterprise's existing systems. Each customer gets a dedicated application layer and database, ITOM maintains a single record of all IT configurable items, and products integrate with existing workflows rather than replace them; once that record and its integrations span IT, HR and customer service, displacement becomes a re-platforming exercise. The evidence is in large commitments: $5 million-plus ACV customers rose from 420 to 502 to 603, and RPO reached $28.2 billion, up 27%, against $13,278 million of FY2025 revenue. The moat is bounded by a market the company itself calls fragmented with low barriers to entry, by larger rivals that can bundle or cut price, and by falling subscription gross margin, 82% to 80%. |
| Chain position | Layer-4 wafer-scale accelerators plus an inference cloud — hardware vendor and specialized cloud in one node. | Downstream AI-cloud operator: owns grid-connected data centers and deploys NVIDIA/AMD GPU systems it rents to hyperscalers, frontier labs, AI developers and enterprises (anchor customers Microsoft and NVIDIA). | Enterprise workflow platform layered on top of customers' existing systems of record. It consumes public cloud capacity (named relationships with AWS, Google, Microsoft and NVIDIA) plus its own data centers, and reaches customers through a direct sales force, global system integrators (Accenture, Deloitte, EY, Infosys, KPMG) and resale partners. Microsoft is named as both partner and competitor. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |