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.
| IBM | Applied Digital | GitLab | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow IBM's FY2025 10-K describes "a highly competitive environment" with "hundreds of competitors" and says IBM is "regularly exposed to new competitors" as it executes its hybrid-cloud/AI strategy, while differentiating through "incumbency with enterprises" and "client relationships and trust" — a real but narrow moat, not a wide one. | 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 The FY2026 10-K (year ended 2026-01-31) shows real expansion inside the installed base: 118% Dollar-Based Net Retention, Base Customers up to 10,682 from 9,893, customers above $100,000 of ARR up to 1,456 from 1,229, and $1.0 million ARR customers "to 155 from 123, an increase of 26%". But the filing concedes "limited barriers to entry" and names "Microsoft Corporation, which owns GitHub" as principal competitor. Retention decelerates (130% FY2024, 123% FY2025, 118% FY2026), and since DBNR is reported "on a threshold basis of 130%," the FY2024 figure is a cap and the slide is steeper than it looks. Narrow, not wide: expansion must be re-won against a bundled hyperscaler. |
| Moat type | switching costs The 10-K roots IBM's differentiation in "incumbency with enterprises" and "client relationships and trust" — installed-base lock-in across its hybrid-cloud platform (Red Hat) and enterprise software and infrastructure raises switching costs. | 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 Stickiness comes from platform embedding, not IP. The 10-K rests differentiation on "our single platform with a unified data model," on "Consolidation of multiple tools into a single platform," and on deployment inside the customer's own perimeter for regulated buyers. Replacement means re-integrating a toolchain and re-certifying compliance. IP is the wrong label: only "16 issued patents and 25 pending patent applications," plus open-source licenses granting "broad permissions to use, copy, modify, and redistribute." The no-lock-in claim is the filing's own characterisation, footnoted to a Forrester study "commissioned by GitLab." |
| Leadership | fast follower An enterprise incumbent that differentiates via "incumbency with enterprises" but is "regularly exposed to new competitors" in its hybrid-cloud/AI push (FY2025 10-K) — a follower in the current AI cycle rather than its leader. | 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). | fast follower The 10-K positions GitLab against a leader rather than as one: "Our principal competitor is Microsoft Corporation, which owns GitHub." Competition reads from the challenger side, differentiating "from GitHub through flexible deployment options that work within enterprise security and compliance requirements, LLM neutrality with self-hosted gateway support" and an open core model. On AI it follows: Duo Agent Platform went "Generally available in January 2026," the last month of the fiscal year. What keeps it a follower rather than behind is cadence, "a new version of our software every month for 172 months in a row," plus a regulated-deployment franchise a SaaS-first rival does not cover. |
| Pricing power | moderate Gross margin is high and rising (54.9% FY2021 to 58.2% FY2025) on a software-mix shift, but "price" is a principal method of competition per the 10-K and consulting/infrastructure remain price-competitive. | 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 FY2026 gross margin was 87% against 89%, with cost of revenue up $35.6 million "primarily due to an increase of $18.4 million in third party hosting costs for SaaS and cloud usage," and management expects SaaS and Duo mix to bring costs that "may adversely impact our gross margins." Strain is explicit: GitLab "may be required to reduce our prices," competitors "may offer their products and services at a lower price or for free," and it "implemented user limits on our free SaaS product." Power retained: Premium lists at $29 per user/month billed annually, and seats bundle $12 and $24 of GitLab Credits. But "A majority of our subscriptions are on a one-year period." |
| Summary | IBM's moat rests on deep enterprise incumbency — sticky installed-base relationships across hybrid cloud (Red Hat), enterprise software, and mission-critical infrastructure, plus brand and a large patent base. But its own FY2025 10-K frames "a highly competitive environment" with "hundreds of competitors" and says IBM is "regularly exposed to new competitors" as it pursues hybrid cloud and AI, so the moat is durable but narrow and contested in the AI/cloud growth arena. | 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. | GitLab sells a single-platform DevSecOps toolchain defended by workflow lock-in rather than intellectual property: a unified data model plus deployment flexibility, including single-tenant "Dedicated for Government with FedRAMP compliance," makes it hard to remove where data residency is contractual. The installed base expands: 118% Dollar-Based Net Retention, 10,682 Base Customers, 1,456 above $100,000 of ARR, 155 above $1.0 million (up 26%), over 70% of ARR from public sector and enterprise. The filing supplies the counterweight: "limited barriers to entry," Microsoft/GitHub as principal competitor, 16 issued patents. Retention (130 to 123 to 118, the 130 a cap), gross margin (89% to 87%) and a January 2026 AI launch point to compression at the commodity end. No source measures market share, so every share band is "unknown". |
| Chain position | A hybrid-cloud platform, enterprise-AI (watsonx), and consulting provider to large enterprises — a software/cloud layer of the AI stack. | Developer and landlord of power-advantaged, liquid-cooled AI data-center capacity, leased long-term to CoreWeave and investment-grade hyperscalers. | GitLab sits at the software-tooling layer, not compute or models. It consumes third-party LLM capacity — marketing "LLM neutrality and support for self-hosted AI gateways, including air-gapped environments" — so it captures no model-layer economics and bears inference as COGS, visible in the $18.4 million rise in hosting costs. Its distinctive position is the regulated perimeter. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |