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 | Salesforce | Adobe | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 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. | narrow The FY2025 10-K's own Competition section says the markets for Adobe's solutions are characterized by 'limited barriers to entry, short product lifecycles, customer price sensitivity ... and the frequent entry of new solutions or competitors', and Item 1A adds that Adobe 'face[s] increasing competition from companies offering generative and agentic AI solutions, including but not limited to prompt-based and multi-modal creation and editing, document productivity and understanding' - the two categories that carry the Digital Media segment. That disclosed contestability caps the moat below wide, while the same filing's industry-standard app designations and 89% consolidated gross margin keep it well above none. |
| 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. | 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. | switching costs The 10-K frames Adobe's differentiation as an integrated ecosystem the customer's work lives inside: Creative Cloud Pro subscribers get 'cloud storage to easily sync, access, collaborate and share their work, files and assets', the AI platform offers a choice of models 'without the friction of switching between workflows and platforms', and on the enterprise side 'Our competitive differentiation comes from the increased value we provide customers by integrating the Adobe Experience Platform with our comprehensive set of solutions'. 96% of FY2025 revenue is subscription, with $22.52B of remaining performance obligations, up 13% year over year. |
| 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. | 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. | clear leader In the segment that is 74% of FY2025 revenue ($17.65B of $23.77B) the 10-K asserts leadership outright: Illustrator 'our industry-standard vector graphics app', After Effects 'our industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects app', Acrobat 'a leading document productivity app', and 'category and brand leadership' in the Competition section. The claim does not extend to the whole company - the same section says the marketing solutions 'face broad competition from large, established enterprise software and cloud companies'. |
| 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 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." | strong Per the same 10-K's segment table, Digital Media earned a 95% gross profit margin in FY2025 (96% FY2024, 95% FY2023) and consolidated gross margin held at 88%/89%/89% across FY2023-FY2025 while revenue grew 11% to $23.77B. 96% of revenue is subscription and remaining performance obligations reached $22.52B, up 13%. Item 1A's warning of 'downward pressure on pricing and gross margins' has not shown up in realized margin. |
| 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. | 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. | Adobe's durable advantage is the cost of leaving rather than any disclosed market share. Its FY2025 10-K calls Illustrator 'our industry-standard vector graphics app' and After Effects 'our industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects app', describes Acrobat as 'a leading document productivity app', and sells them as one subscription ecosystem where assets, workflows and collaboration are cloud-resident. The economics follow: Digital Media earned a 95% gross profit margin on $17.65B of FY2025 revenue, 74% of the company. The same filing is unusually candid about the limits, calling its markets characterized by 'limited barriers to entry' and warning that competition will 'continue to intensify' with named generative and agentic AI entrants in both creation and document productivity - so the moat reads narrow rather than wide, held today by realized pricing and switching costs rather than by structural protection. |
| 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). | 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. | An AI-application layer company that both builds its own commercially safe Firefly foundation models and licenses 'an extensive ecosystem of third-party models', distributing generative AI into creative, document and marketing workflows. |
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| Long-horizon vote | -0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.20 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.24 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |