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.
| CrowdStrike | Applied Digital | RELX plc | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow Narrow rather than wide because the FY2026 10-K argues both ways and its own risk factors are the harder side: it describes a self-reinforcing data advantage and says "we do not believe any of our competitors currently have a true platform offering equivalent to the Falcon platform", but the same filing calls the market for security and IT operations solutions "intensely competitive, fragmented", warns that "Competitive pricing pressure may reduce our gross profits", and still carries the July 19 Incident as having "had, and is expected to continue to have, an adverse effect on our business, sales, customer and partner relations, reputation" more than two years after it occurred. | 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 Independent sources support entrenched positions in RELX's two content businesses. In legal research, a Stanford-led study of legal AI tools (arXiv 2405.20362v1, 2024-05-30, https://arxiv.org/html/2405.20362v1) says Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis "have historically enjoyed a virtual duopoly over the legal research market" (citing a 2006 article for that point) and "continue to be two of the largest incumbents now selling legal AI products". In scientific publishing, Larivière, Haustein and Mongeon in PLOS ONE (2015-06-10, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502) found Reed-Elsevier published 24.1% of natural and medical sciences papers in 2013, the largest share, and that its Scientific, Technical & Medical division's profit margin "steadily increased from 30.6% to 38.9% between 2006 and 2013." RELX's 2025 Annual Report (published 2026-02-19) shows the economics continuing: revenue of £9,590m, adjusted operating profit of £3,342m and an adjusted operating margin of 34.8% against 33.9% in 2024, with 54% of revenue from subscriptions. The limits are in the same report. Its principal risks say "We operate in highly competitive and dynamic markets" that change with "technological innovations, such as the use of artificial intelligence" and "the entrance of new competitors". Exhibitions holds "a global market share of less than 10%" in "a fragmented industry", and the Chair noted "share price volatility across a number of sectors, including software and data services." Long-held positions in legal research and scientific publishing, with margins that have kept rising, support a wide rating. The main threat is AI-native competition, which has not yet slowed reported growth. |
| Moat type | network effects The 10-K states the mechanism directly: "The more data that is fed into our Falcon platform, the more intelligent the AI Security Cloud becomes, the stronger our ability to anticipate and counter evolving adversary tradecraft, and the more our customers benefit, creating a powerful network effect that increases the overall value we provide." | 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. | intangibles ip RELX says its advantage is proprietary content and data. The 2025 Annual Report says it builds products by combining "our unique content and comprehensive data sets with advanced technologies", describes Lexis+ AI as "built and trained on one of the world's largest repositories of accurate and exclusive legal content", and cites more than 3,000 Elsevier journals including the Cell Press and The Lancet families. On the H1 2026 results call (2026-07-23, https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/investors/transcripts/first-half-results-2026-transcript.pdf) the CEO said Risk grows by "leveraging our unique contributory and proprietary datasets, with over 90% of revenue coming from machine-to-machine interactions." Independent support comes from PLOS ONE (2015), which says libraries face a publisher oligopoly in which "each product represents a unique value and cannot be replaced". According to the annual report, in June 2025 LexisNexis agreed a strategic alliance with Harvey, an AI platform for legal and professional services, under which LexisNexis "will integrate its Lexis+ AI capabilities (powered by LexisNexis content) within the Harvey platform". Switching costs add to this: legal products are sold "on a paid subscription basis, with subscriptions often under multi-year contracts." |
| Leadership | co leader Co-leader rather than clear leader because the only claim of platform primacy available is the company's own ("we do not believe any of our competitors currently have a true platform offering equivalent"), while the same 10-K describes a fragmented market and lists seven distinct categories of competitor, from legacy antivirus to network security, cloud security, identity and legacy SIEM vendors. | 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 RELX's own 2025 Annual Report ranks its businesses as Risk "Key verticals #1", STM "Global #1", Legal "US #2" and "Outside US #1 or #2", and Exhibitions "Global #2". Independent sources, both dated, support two of these. PLOS ONE (2015) puts Reed-Elsevier first in natural and medical sciences publishing with 24.1% of 2013 papers, ahead of Springer (11.9%) and Wiley-Blackwell (11.3%). The Stanford study (2024-05-30) describes legal research as a historical duopoly of Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, and found that "Lexis+ AI is the highest-performing system we test, answering 65% of our queries accurately." The publishing data is from 2013, Legal is second in the U.S. by RELX's own account, and the Risk and Exhibitions ranks are the company's own claims. That supports co-leader, not clear leader. |
| Pricing power | moderate The 10-K's risk factors state that "Competitive pricing pressure may reduce our gross profits" and that competing successfully may require "aggressive pricing", which is the company's own case against strong pricing power; the offsetting factor it cites is module consolidation on one sensor. | 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 The 2025 Annual Report says RELX products "often account for less than 1% of our customers' total cost base but can have a significant and positive impact on the economics of the remaining 99%", and reports a group adjusted operating margin of 34.8% in 2025 against 33.9% in 2024. On the H1 2026 call the CFO reported a margin of 35.5%. He attributed the gains to cost discipline: "we focus on ensuring that cost growth remains below revenue growth in all of our businesses." The CEO said that "roughly 3/4 of the renewal value is coming from the Lexis+ with Protégé package", which means renewals are moving customers onto the higher-value AI platform. Independent evidence on Elsevier is older. PLOS ONE (2015) says libraries "have to manage with less as prices increase" and that, because of the oligopoly, they are "more or less helpless". It also found the STM division's profit margin never fell below 30% over the 1991-2013 period it studied. RELX does not disclose list-price increases. Most of the evidence is margin-based. The margins are high and rising, but management credits the gains to keeping cost growth below revenue growth, and the only independent evidence of price increases is from 2015. That supports moderate, not strong, pricing power. |
| Summary | A single lightweight sensor collects enterprise data once and reuses it across 33 cloud modules, and the pooled telemetry trains the models every customer is then defended by — the 10-K calls this crowdsourced, high-fidelity data "cloud-scale AI" and treats it as the fundamental differentiator from competitors. | 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. | RELX sells information-based analytics and decision tools in four business areas. In 2025, per its Annual Report, Risk (LexisNexis Risk Solutions) had revenue of £3,485m and adjusted operating profit of £1,305m; Scientific, Technical & Medical (Elsevier) £2,714m and £1,035m; Legal (LexisNexis Legal & Professional) £1,806m and £415m; and Exhibitions (RX) £1,186m and £410m. The moat rests on content and data that are hard to replicate. A Stanford study describes a historical Westlaw-LexisNexis "virtual duopoly" in legal research. A PLOS ONE study found Reed-Elsevier the largest publisher of natural and medical sciences papers in 2013, and RELX reports that Elsevier articles accounted for "over 18% of global research output and 29% of citations" in its latest comparison. Risk is built on contributory databases such as the C.L.U.E. claims history database, which "collects and reports up to seven years of US personal automobile, property claims and small business information". The products are cheap relative to what customers spend: RELX says they "often account for less than 1% of our customers' total cost base". Group adjusted operating margin rose to 34.8% in 2025 and to 35.5% in the first half of 2026. AI is the main test of the moat. RELX is turning it into upsell: about 90% of Legal new-sales value now comes from the AI-enabled Lexis+ with Protégé platform, and Legal underlying revenue growth reached 10% in H1 2026. On the same call, an analyst cited AI-native legal players Harvey and Legora with combined annual recurring revenue above $400 million, and the CEO said RELX is "not going to be the leader" in the much larger legal workflow software market. RELX names the shift to open access as a principal risk for Elsevier. On the 2026 call, an analyst raised a U.S. OMB proposal to make journal subscription costs and article processing charges unallowable expenses on federal research awards. |
| Chain position | AI-native security platform — an adopter and reseller of AI rather than a supplier of AI infrastructure. | Developer and landlord of power-advantaged, liquid-cooled AI data-center capacity, leased long-term to CoreWeave and investment-grade hyperscalers. | An AI-application-layer user of frontier models: on the H1 2026 call the CEO said RELX takes AI tools "from the sort of frontier lab companies" and runs them inside its own products on verified content. The 2025 Annual Report says LexisNexis will integrate Lexis+ AI capabilities, powered by LexisNexis content, within the Harvey platform. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral 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. |