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.
| IREN | Credo Technology | NVIDIA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | 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 10-K names Broadcom, Marvell and Astera Labs as principal competitors that compete on 'some, but not all' of Credo's solutions, and discloses that the top 10 customers were approximately 90% of fiscal 2026 revenue with two customers at 10% or more each. A defensible technical position sold into a handful of buyers with that much leverage is narrow, not wide. | wide Wide: the CUDA software platform and its developer installed base create high switching costs across the AI-training stack, defended by $76.7B cumulative R&D and reinforced by ~71% FY2026 gross margins and Data Center revenue (~90% of total) up 68% YoY — durable, hard-to-replicate advantages per the FY2026 10-K. |
| Moat type | 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. | intangibles ip The filing states the products 'are based on our own optimized Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) and Digital Signal Processor (DSP) technologies' and lists 'extent of IP protection and enforcement of rights' among the principal competitive factors in its market. | intangibles ip The durable edge rests on proprietary IP and software: the full-stack CUDA development platform running on all NVIDIA GPUs plus hundreds of proprietary domain libraries/SDKs/APIs, and $76.7B cumulative R&D yielding "inventions that are essential to modern computing" (NVIDIA invented the GPU in 1999). This is reinforced by developer-ecosystem network effects and CUDA switching costs, per the FY2026 10-K Business section. |
| Leadership | 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. | co leader The 10-K states 'We believe we are the only company in our industry offering a complete suite of high-performance connectivity solutions', while naming Broadcom, Marvell and Astera as principal competitors on parts of the portfolio — a co-leader's claim, attributed to the company, not an independently observed share. | clear leader FY2026 Data Center revenue was $193.7B (~90% of the $215.9B total), up 68% YoY on the Blackwell ramp, and NVIDIA describes itself as "a data center scale AI infrastructure company reshaping all industries." The 10-K frames named rivals as parties who "provide or intend to provide" GPUs/accelerators — incumbent-leader positioning. |
| Pricing power | 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 n-1 node advantage the filing describes lets Credo price against competitors from a lower cost base, but the same filing discloses two customers at 10% or more of revenue and a top-10 concentration near 90%, which is buyer leverage working the other way. | strong FY2026 gross margin was 71.1% (75.0% in FY2025); per the 10-K MD&A the ~3.9pt decline reflects the Hopper HGX→Blackwell full-system mix shift and a one-time $4.5B H20 excess-inventory/purchase-obligation charge, not competitive price erosion. A low-70s% hardware gross margin evidences strong pricing power. |
| Summary | 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. | Credo's durable asset is its own SerDes and DSP silicon, which the 10-K says reaches 'similar performance to leading competitors' products but at a lower cost and more highly available legacy node (n-1 advantage)'. That cost-and-supply edge, plus a portfolio the company believes is the industry's only complete high-performance connectivity suite, is what holds a position against far larger rivals — and it is held with roughly 90% of revenue coming from ten customers. | NVIDIA pairs market-leading accelerated-computing hardware (the Blackwell data-center platform) with a proprietary full-stack software moat — CUDA plus hundreds of domain libraries — funded by $76.7B of cumulative R&D, and its "large and growing number of developers and installed base... strengthens our ecosystem and increases the value of our platform for our customers" (FY2026 10-K). Competition is intensifying from AMD, Intel and Huawei, and from hyperscalers (Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft) designing internal AI silicon, but rivals must overcome NVIDIA's entrenched CUDA software ecosystem to displace it. |
| Chain position | 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). | Upstream interconnect supplier: SerDes/DSP silicon and active cables sitting between accelerators, switches and optics inside AI data centers. | Upstream compute-platform supplier: NVIDIA sells full-stack data-center systems (GPU + Arm CPU + DPU + NVLink/InfiniBand networking + CUDA software) to cloud providers and enterprises, and relies on third-party foundry/assembly-test-packaging partners (e.g., SPIL, Amkor, Wistron, Fabrinet). Per the FY2026 10-K, several of its largest customers (hyperscalers such as Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft) are simultaneously customers and emerging competitors developing internal accelerated-computing silicon. |
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| Long-horizon vote | -0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.42 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. |