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 | Powell Industries, Inc. | CoreWeave | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 FY2025 10-K (filed 2025-11-19) says the company believes its integration capabilities, technical and project management acumen, application engineering expertise and specialty contracting experience 'give us a sustainable competitive advantage in our markets', and that 'a significant portion of our business is from repeat customers', many times involving EPC firms 'with whom we often have long, established relationships'. Neither the filing nor Powell's record shows that edge protecting returns. Item 1A warns 'Our industry is highly competitive' and says certain competitors 'may have lower cost structures' and 'may, therefore, be able to provide their products or services at lower prices'. Item 1 says products are 'typically awarded in competitive bid situations' and that projects 'are typically non-recurring.' Stored fundamentals from Powell's filings show operating margin between -4.9% and 7.1% in every fiscal year from FY2011 to FY2022, with operating losses in FY2017 (-$19.3M on $395.9M of revenue) and FY2018 (-$9.1M on $448.7M). Operating margin has since risen to 19.7% in FY2025 ($217.9M on $1,104.3M), but the 10-K credits the gross-margin gain to 'favorable volume leverage and strong project execution in a stable pricing environment', not to a competitive edge. A self-described advantage that left operating margin no higher than 7.1% in any year from FY2011 to FY2022 is not shown to be a moat, so the band is none. | narrow The FY2025 10-K describes a purpose-built AI cloud with a real performance edge, but its own risk section discloses the defining constraint: 'approximately 67% of our revenue from our top customer, Microsoft, for the year ended December 31, 2025' — a specialized platform whose economics rest on one buyer that is also a hyperscaler competitor is narrow, not wide. |
| 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 describes engineering know-how, not protected technology or lock-in. It says 'We consider our engineering, project management, systems integration and technical support capabilities vital to the success of our business', that 'Powell's expertise in vacuum circuit breaker engineering is internationally recognized', and that unpatented technology, including engineering technical skills and know-how, 'is important to our overall business'. It also says 'we believe that the growth of our business will depend primarily upon the quality of our products and our relationships with our customers, rather than the extent of our patent protection', so patents are not the source. Switching costs are not shown: projects are 'typically awarded in competitive bid situations' and 'typically non-recurring', even though 'a significant portion of our business is from repeat customers'. The same filing says some competitors 'are significantly larger and have substantially greater global resources such as engineering, manufacturing and marketing', so the know-how is a capability rivals also bring to each bid, not a demonstrated moat source; the type is none. | cost scale The 10-K grounds the advantage in purpose-built infrastructure — first-to-deploy NVIDIA GB200/GB300 NVL72 systems and a data-center fabric 'designed to harness the full potential of each GPU' — a performance-per-dollar edge at scale, not a customer lock. |
| 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. | at parity The 10-K gives no share or rank. It says Powell competes 'with a small number of multinational competitors', naming ABB, Eaton, Schneider and Siemens Industries, and that some are 'significantly larger and have substantially greater global resources'. It adds that bid evaluation varies 'from project to project', covering technical support, engineering and manufacturing capability, equipment rating, delivered value, scheduling and price. Powell therefore competes bid by bid alongside those multinationals rather than leading the category. | co leader The 10-K positions CoreWeave as a first-to-deploy specialist against hyperscalers who offer AI compute 'as part of a broader product portfolio' — a leader of the purpose-built neocloud niche, not of the AI-cloud market its own filing says it competes in. |
| 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 The 10-K says gross margin rose to 29% of revenue in FY2025 from 27% in FY2024, 'due to favorable volume leverage and strong project execution in a stable pricing environment'. The 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/80420/000008042026000107/powl-20260630.htm) gives the same reason for 30% in the first nine months of FY2026, so neither filing credits price. Before this upcycle, stored fundamentals from Powell's filings show gross margin between 12.8% and 21.6% in every fiscal year from FY2011 to FY2022 (FY2022: $85.0M of gross profit on $532.6M of revenue, about 16%), which fits cyclical volume leverage more than pricing power. The limits are explicit: the 10-K says 'Fixed-price contracts can limit our ability to pass these increases to our customers', and Item 1A says certain competitors 'may, therefore, be able to provide their products or services at lower prices'. The one offset is cost pass-through, not price-setting: the 10-K says 'we believe we can manage this volatility through contract pricing adjustments'. Pricing power is rated weak. | moderate A first-to-deploy performance edge on scarce new NVIDIA systems supports pricing while the hardware is scarce, but 67% single-customer concentration is buyer leverage the filing states outright. |
| 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. | Powell designs, builds and services custom-engineered power-distribution packages: power control rooms, E-Houses, switchgear and medium-voltage breakers. Its FY2025 10-K says the company believes its integration, project-management and application-engineering capabilities 'give us a sustainable competitive advantage in our markets', and that a significant portion of its business comes from repeat customers, often through EPC firms with which it has long relationships. The record does not show that edge protecting returns. Work is typically won in competitive bids, projects are typically non-recurring, and the 10-K names ABB, Eaton, Schneider and Siemens Industries as principal competitors, some of which it calls significantly larger. The company says it believes growth depends on product quality and customer relationships rather than patents. Stored fundamentals from Powell's filings show operating margin between -4.9% and 7.1% in every fiscal year from FY2011 to FY2022, with operating losses in FY2017 and FY2018. In the current cycle, gross margin reached 29% in FY2025 (10-K) and 30% in the first nine months of FY2026 (10-Q, quarter ended June 30, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/80420/000008042026000107/powl-20260630.htm). Both filings attribute that to favorable volume leverage and strong project execution 'in a stable pricing environment', not to price increases. The same 10-Q reports backlog of $2.4 billion and says diversification into electric utility and data centers 'has reduced the cyclicality of our business.' It also cautions that as data center projects become a larger component of backlog and revenues, the product mix may shift, 'as such projects will likely require less custom engineered-to-order equipment and systems than other end markets', which is the custom-engineering skill the claimed edge rests on. | CoreWeave sells a full-lifecycle AI cloud — training, inference, data movement, agentic workflows — on infrastructure 'purpose-built to accelerate breakthroughs by AI pioneers,' with the Weights & Biases acquisition adding the developer tooling layer as 'a single stack.' The edge the filing claims is speed and efficiency on the newest NVIDIA systems. The moat's ceiling is in the same document's risk factors: 67% of 2025 revenue came from Microsoft, and the hyperscalers it competes with are 'also customers of, and partners to, CoreWeave' — the largest buyer and the largest rival are the same companies. |
| Chain position | A hybrid-cloud platform, enterprise-AI (watsonx), and consulting provider to large enterprises — a software/cloud layer of the AI stack. | Supplies custom-engineered switchgear and power control rooms to oil and gas, utility and commercial/industrial projects. Its Q3 FY2026 bookings included 'a data center project valued at over $400 million' (10-Q, quarter ended June 30, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/80420/000008042026000107/powl-20260630.htm). | Layer-8 purpose-built AI neocloud — first-to-deploy NVIDIA systems for training and inference at scale. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |