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.
| Eli Lilly and Company | Applied Digital | Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | wide Eli Lilly's FY2025 10-K states "Intellectual property protection is critical" and that compound patents provide roughly 20-year market exclusivity ("patents in each relevant country last for a period of 20 years"), warning that loss of patent protection causes a "severe and rapid decline in revenues." Backed by an 83.0% gross margin (up from 81.3% in 2024) and a fast-growing, patent-protected incretin franchise (Mounjaro +99%, Zepbound +175% in 2025), the economic moat is wide and durable. Source: LLY FY2025 10-K. | 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. | narrow Salesforce's own language caps this at narrow: Item 1 calls its market "highly competitive, rapidly evolving and fragmented, and subject to changing technology with low barriers to entry." What holds it above none is scale and contract duration: $72.4B total RPO at 2026-01-31 versus $63.4B (+14%), current RPO $35.1B versus $30.2B (+16%), on revenue of $41.5B (+10%). But cRPO growth "was positively impacted by three percent" by currency, and total RPO "includes approximately $2.2 billion" from Informatica, acquired November 2025. Adjusted, the contracted base still outgrows revenue, but by less than the headline implies. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip Per the LLY FY2025 10-K, the pharma protection "anticipated to be of most relevance" is "patents claiming the active ingredient (the compound patent)," supplemented by regulatory data protection, FDA approvals, and brands — i.e., intangible assets. The 10-K notes that without such protection, products face intense generic and biosimilar price competition that erodes revenue quickly. | 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 Switching costs, with a caveat: the filing's clearest lock-in sentence is about rivals' customers, not its own. "Many prospective customers have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to implement and integrate their current enterprise software... may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate away" is a headwind to Salesforce's own growth. Evidence for its own base is architectural: Data 360 unifies data into "a single, governed source of truth," Agentforce runs on existing processes "without requiring customers to remove and rebuild," behind $72.4B of contracted revenue. Contracts run "typically 12 to 36 months" with no renewal obligation. |
| Leadership | co leader Duopoly with Novo Nordisk: Novo's own FY2025 20-F names "Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly [as] the most significant companies measured by market share" in the global diabetes and GLP-1 markets. Lilly is ascendant — the 20-F concedes Wegovy's years-long US anti-obesity prescription lead "was overtaken by a competing GLP-1 based product in the beginning of 2025" (Lilly's tirzepatide) — but Novo still cites Ozempic as "the leading product by sales," so co-leader is the honest band. Sources: Novo Nordisk FY2025 20-F; LLY FY2025 10-K. | 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). | clear leader Clear leader in the category as it exists today, runner-up in the one it is being rebuilt into. Per IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker on 2025 data, Salesforce was first in worldwide CRM applications for a thirteenth consecutive year at 20.0% share, and first in Sales (fourteenth year), Customer Service (thirteenth), Marketing (seventh), model-driven application platform (eleventh) and Integration (fourth). These come from Salesforce announcing its own IDC results via a trade outlet, in translation, not IDC primary material. In the same tracker's new Agent Build and Deploy segment it ranked second at 17.5%, albeit as fastest-growing vendor. |
| Pricing power | moderate Mixed. The LLY 10-K shows an 83.0% gross margin (up 1.7pp), evidence of strong list-price power on exclusive branded drugs; but it repeatedly notes 2025 revenue growth was "partially offset by lower realized prices" for both Mounjaro and Zepbound, alongside heavy PBM/formulary rebate pressure and default anti-obesity coverage restrictions (e.g., US self-insured employers "must generally opt in" for obesity-drug coverage). Net pricing power is therefore moderate, not strong. | 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 Gross margin rises across the Item 7 table — gross profit of $32,255M on $41,525M of revenue, 78% of total revenues in FY2026 against 77% in FY2025 and 75% in FY2024 — yet MD&A denies price as the cause: growth "was primarily caused by volume-driven increases from new business," and "Pricing was not a significant driver of the increase in revenues for the period." Item 1A names consumption-based pricing among attrition factors, says Agentforce and Data 360 monetization "remain relatively new and uncertain," and concedes "limited experience with determining optimal pricing for our consumption-based contracts." |
| Summary | Lilly's moat rests on patent-protected, FDA-approved branded medicines led by its tirzepatide incretin franchise: per the FY2025 10-K, Mounjaro ($22.97B) and Zepbound ($13.54B) together generated roughly 56% of 2025's $65.2B revenue (up 99% and 175% respectively), while compound patents confer ~20-year market exclusivity and support an 83.0% gross margin. Durable competition only emerges after patents and regulatory data protection lapse, at which point the 10-K warns generics and biosimilars drive a "severe and rapid decline in revenues." | 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. | Salesforce is the incumbent of record in CRM applications and is paid like one: $41.5B of FY2026 revenue (+10%), 78% gross margin, $72.4B of contracted revenue not yet recognized, and first place in worldwide CRM for a thirteenth consecutive year at 20.0% share per IDC's tracker as announced by Salesforce. Enterprise data and workflow embedded through Data 360 and Agentforce is costly to unwind, and the agentic layer is deliberately built atop existing processes rather than requiring re-implementation. The limits are the company's own: it twice describes its market as having low barriers to entry, names AI-native startups whose solutions "may bypass traditional business process workflows or displace established user interfaces," ranks second at 17.5% in IDC's new Agent Build and Deploy segment, and concedes pricing did not drive FY2026 growth. |
| Chain position | Upstream branded-drug originator. Per the FY2025 10-K, US distribution flows through three wholesalers (McKesson, Cencora, Cardinal Health), each accounting for over 10% of consolidated revenue, into consolidated PBMs/payers whose formularies and rebate demands constrain net price; Lilly is also expanding a direct-to-patient channel, LillyDirect. | Developer and landlord of power-advantaged, liquid-cooled AI data-center capacity, leased long-term to CoreWeave and investment-grade hyperscalers. | Applications-layer incumbent: sells enterprise CRM and agentic software to end customers across industries, consumes cloud infrastructure (third-party IaaS partners plus its own Hyperforce estate) and third-party LLMs, and sits upstream of no hardware supply chain. Exposure is to enterprise software budgets and to whether the agentic layer is captured by incumbent suites or AI-native entrants. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.30 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |