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.
| Tempus AI | Teradyne | NVIDIA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow The FY2025 10-K documents a real asset: a network "connected in some way to more than 55% of all oncologists practicing in the United States" and "more than 65% of all academic medical centers," via "more than 700 unique data connections" across "more than 5,000 healthcare institution sites," with "broad data rights, including the rights to longitudinally updated data." Not eroding: revenue $693.4M to $1,271.8M (+83%), net loss narrowed from $705.8M to $245.0M. Not wide: still loss-making against "an accumulated deficit of $2.4 billion," with payment received on only "approximately 55% of our clinical oncology NGS tests and 50% of our hereditary tests." | narrow Real but bounded: the FY2025 10-K reports gross profit at 58.2% of total revenues, a level it records as a decrease - 'Gross profit as a percent of total revenues decreased by 0.3 points, primarily due to product mix' from 58.5% in 2024 - while a shared IG-XL test-program environment spans the FLEX and J750 families. Against that, the filing's own risk-factor heading is 'We are subject to intense competition' and it concedes that 'Some of our competitors have introduced or announced new products with certain performance characteristics that may be considered equal or superior to those we currently offer,' adding that it faces competition 'from emerging Asian companies and internal development at several of our customers.' | 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 | network effects The filing states the mechanism: "Each product line is designed to enable and enhance the other, thereby creating network effects." That is the filing's own characterisation, so the rating rests on corroborating facts: 700+ data connections across 5,000+ sites with longitudinal rights; roughly 801,000 tests in FY2025 (about 340,500 Oncology) feeding the records Insights licenses; Insights working with "19 of the 20 largest public pharmaceutical companies based on 2024 revenue" at "approximately 126%" net revenue retention. Intangibles fit less well: the xT PMA, ADLT status, Paige's clearance and five CAP/CLIA labs are real, but named peers hold comparable approvals. | switching costs The 10-K's Products section grounds the stickiness in test-program and capital reuse rather than in protected IP: the FLEX Test Platform runs 'The IG-XL™ software operating system which provides fast program development, including instant conversion from single to multi-site test', the J750 'shares the IG-XL software environment with the family of FLEX Test Platform systems,' and its instruments are 'coupled with a universal slot test head design that allows easy test system reconfiguration to address changing test needs.' The filing credits that versatility with making FLEX 'a widely used test solution at OSATs... allowing OSATs to leverage their capital investments.' The same 10-K expressly disclaims an IP-based moat: 'We do not believe that any single piece of intellectual property or proprietary rights is essential to our business.' | 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 | at parity The filing claims no ranked lead; its positional language is hedged, as in "one of the largest sequencers of cancer patients... in the United States." Two disclosures cut the other way: the reimbursement goal is to become "more in line with other NGS providers who have adopted similar strategies, such as FMI and Guardant," and competitors "may have longer operating histories; larger customer bases; greater brand recognition and market penetration." Competition names Foundation Medicine (Roche), Caris, Guardant, Natera, Neogenomics, Quest, LabCorp, Flatiron, IQVIA, ConcertAI and major CROs, all unranked. Scaled positions on both sides support parity, not a top position. | co leader The 10-K opens by calling Teradyne 'a leading global provider of automated test equipment and robotics solutions' - a leading provider, not the leader - and its Competition section names Semiconductor Test rivals non-exhaustively: competitors 'include, among others, Advantest Corporation, SPEA S.p.A., and Cohu, Inc.' It discloses no share figure and warns that competitors' announced products 'may be considered equal or superior to those we currently offer,' which reads as shared leadership rather than a clear lead. | 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 Diagnostics prices are administered: after a CPT code is set, "CMS, establish payment levels and coverage rules under Medicare," delegating to MACs, while "Private payers establish their rates and coverage rules independently." Average revenue per Oncology test rose from about $1,510 to about $1,600, "driven primarily by increased Medicare reimbursement rates" — the payer moved the price. Collection came on "approximately 55% of our clinical oncology NGS tests and 50% of our hereditary tests," and payer "cost-saving initiatives... are likely to result in pricing pressures." The moderate pocket is confined to Data and applications ($316.4M of $1,271.8M). | moderate Gross profit was 58.2% of total revenues in 2025 against 58.5% in 2024, and the 10-K attributes the 0.3-point decline to product mix; product gross margin fell 0.8 points to 57.3%. The risk factor 'Our operating results are likely to fluctuate significantly' lists 'competitive pressures on selling prices' among factors that 'could impact future operations,' and the same list cites the tendency of customers to 'wait until late in a quarter to commit to purchase... or the hope of obtaining more favorable pricing from a competitor seeking the business' - margin is defended, not expanded. | 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 | Tempus AI's durable asset is an installed provider network and the longitudinal data rights attached to it, not any single assay: connections to more than 55% of practicing U.S. oncologists and more than 65% of academic medical centers, 700+ data connections across 5,000+ institution sites. That network makes the linked clinical-molecular database sellable — Insights serves 19 of the 20 largest public pharmaceutical companies by 2024 revenue at roughly 126% net revenue retention, and the trial network (1,400+ trials signed, 40,000+ patients identified) depends on the sequencing base. Economics are improving: revenue up 83% to $1.27B, net loss down from $705.8M to $245.0M. It stops short of wide on the filing's own terms — a $2.4B accumulated deficit, payment on only ~55% of oncology and ~50% of hereditary tests, and Diagnostics prices set by CMS, MACs and private payers. | Teradyne sells the test step that sits between fabrication and shipment, and its hold on customers comes from platform continuity rather than patents. The FY2025 10-K describes one IG-XL software environment shared across the FLEX and J750 test families and a universal slot test head that lets a customer reconfigure a system to address changing test needs, which the filing credits with making FLEX widely used at OSATs because it lets them leverage their capital investments. The margin that continuity sits on is high but not rising: gross profit was 58.2% of revenue in 2025, which the filing records as a 0.3-point decrease from 2024 on product mix, with product margin down 0.8 points to 57.3% and service margin up 2.9 points to 62.9% - and the filing attributes that service gain to the May 2024 sale of the DIS business, not to the platform. It is a narrow moat, not a wide one: the filing names Advantest, SPEA and Cohu 'among others' in Semiconductor Test, warns of internal development at several customers, states that rival products may be 'equal or superior,' and discloses that the five largest direct customers rose to 44% of consolidated revenue in 2025 from 36% in 2024 - buyer power that caps how much of the platform advantage converts to price. | 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 | Tempus sits between clinical care and pharma R&D. It ingests data from 5,000+ institution sites, runs five CAP/CLIA labs (Chicago, Atlanta, Raleigh, Aliso Viejo, Minneapolis via OneOme), and sells Diagnostics to providers and payers ($955.4M FY2025, +111%, administered) and Data and applications to pharma ($316.4M, +31%, negotiated). The clinical output is the data business's input. | Back-end capital equipment: its testers sit between fabrication and shipment, and the 10-K states that AI related customer demand drove the majority of revenue in the second half of 2025, with Semiconductor Test at 79% of consolidated revenue. | 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 | -0.01 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.42 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. |