Rankings

Moat Strength

How defensible each company's position is, on a 0–5 scale. The MOATE score is ours; the community score is yours — score any company yourself.

#	Company	MOATE	Community	The moat
1	VisaFintech & Commerce	4.1Fortress 4.1 Fortress	—No ratings yet Rate →	The textbook two-sided network: every card needs every terminal, and Visa sits in the middle of both.
2	ApplePlatforms	3.9Deep 3.9 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	An installed base that is expensive to leave, monetized through services on top of paid-for hardware.
3	MastercardFintech & Commerce	3.9Deep 3.9 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The other half of the duopoly, one notch behind Visa on scale and brand, identical in structure.
4	AmazonPlatforms	3.8Deep 3.8 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	Two scale machines — logistics and AWS — that no challenger can afford to replicate.
5	ArmSemis	3.7Deep 3.7 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	Owns the instruction set the world’s software is compiled for, and charges rent on every chip that runs it.
6	NvidiaSemis	3.7Deep 3.7 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	CUDA turned a hardware lead into a software standard; the ecosystem is the moat.
7	TSMCSemis	3.7Deep 3.7 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The only foundry that manufactures the leading edge at scale — and the most geopolitically exposed company on the index.
8	JPMorganFintech & Commerce	3.6Deep 3.6 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The largest bank in America, with a technology budget bigger than most software companies’ revenue.
9	MicrosoftPlatforms	3.6Deep 3.6 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	Owns the enterprise seat and the procurement line item; every new product ships through doors it already holds.
10	ASMLSemis	3.5Deep 3.5 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The only company on Earth that makes the machine every leading-edge chip requires.
11	GooglePlatforms	3.5Deep 3.5 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	A data and distribution flywheel around search that AI answer engines are now attacking at the business-model level.
12	SalesforceSoftware	3.4Deep 3.4 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The system of record for the sales organization; deeply embedded, and now betting on agents to defend seat pricing.
13	StripeFintech & Commerce	3.4Deep 3.4 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The developer default for payments, now positioning itself as the rail for agentic commerce.
14	WalmartConsumer & Media	3.4Deep 3.4 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The largest retailer in the world turned its store footprint into a logistics network and an ad business.
15	MetaPlatforms	3.3Deep 3.3 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The strongest social graph ever assembled, delivered through operating systems it does not own.
16	ShopifyFintech & Commerce	3.3Deep 3.3 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The operating system for independent merchants; the store is expensive to leave and the ecosystem keeps growing.
17	AdobeSoftware	3.2Deep 3.2 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The creative-software standard, with the most actively attacked moat in enterprise software.
18	AirbnbConsumer & Media	3.2Deep 3.2 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	A two-sided global network with unique inventory, held back by the cities it operates in.
19	CrowdStrikeSoftware	3.2Deep 3.2 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The endpoint-security platform whose customers stayed through an outage that grounded airlines — the switching cost, demonstrated.
20	NetflixConsumer & Media	3.2Deep 3.2 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	Won the streaming wars on scale and data; now defending against YouTube rather than Hollywood.
21	Palo Alto NetworksSoftware	3.2Deep 3.2 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The largest cybersecurity vendor, consolidating a fragmented market onto one platform.
22	SpaceXMobility	3.2Deep 3.2 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	Reusable launch and the constellation are unbuyable; the AI segment burns billions against them.
23	BroadcomSemis	3.1Deep 3.1 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	Custom silicon for the hyperscalers plus VMware lock-in, run for cash.
24	DisneyConsumer & Media	3.1Deep 3.1 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The most unbuyable IP library in media, monetized through parks, streaming, and everything in between.
25	OpenAIAI Labs	3.1Deep 3.1 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The category verb, with the biggest consumer footprint in AI and the most complicated dependencies.
26	OracleSoftware	3.1Deep 3.1 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	The highest switching costs in enterprise software, monetized aggressively; now betting on cloud infrastructure for growth.
27	ServiceNowSoftware	3.1Deep 3.1 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	A system of record for enterprise workflows that is expensive to leave — and exposed if AI agents replace the workflow.
28	UberMobility	3.1Deep 3.1 Deep	—No ratings yet Rate →	A two-sided network that reached liquidity city by city, now facing the question of what happens when the driver is a robot.
29	AnthropicAI Labs	2.9Solid 2.9 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A frontier lab with the safety brand and rented everything else — compute, capital, and distribution.
30	PalantirSoftware	2.9Solid 2.9 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A near-permanent franchise inside government, and a well-funded software vendor everywhere else.
31	QualcommSemis	2.8Solid 2.8 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A patent-licensing moat with an expiry date, as its largest customer builds its own modem.
32	TeslaMobility	2.8Solid 2.8 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A strong brand and a manufacturing lead being tested by cheaper rivals and a robotaxi bet that has not paid out yet.
33	NikeConsumer & Media	2.6Solid 2.6 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	One of the great consumer brands, currently learning that brand alone is not distribution.
34	PayPalFintech & Commerce	2.6Solid 2.6 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A checkout moat that eroded in plain sight, still carrying a large network and the Venmo graph.
35	SpotifyConsumer & Media	2.6Solid 2.6 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	The largest audio platform in the world, renting the thing it sells from three labels.
36	SnowflakeSoftware	2.5Solid 2.5 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A data warehouse built on data gravity, now watching open formats and its own cloud landlords erode it.
37	AMDSemis	2.2Solid 2.2 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A strong second source competing on price and performance inside ecosystems it does not control.
38	IntelSemis	2.2Solid 2.2 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	The index’s clearest case of a moat lost: process lead gone, architecture argument gone, now rebuilding on public money.
39	SoFiFintech & Commerce	2.2Solid 2.2 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	A digital bank with a charter and a tech platform, competing for deposits on marketing rather than moat.
40	MicronSemis	2.0Solid 2.0 Solid	—No ratings yet Rate →	One of three DRAM makers selling a commodity through a brutal cycle; HBM is the current bright spot.

How the score works

Eight questions, each rated 1–10, weighted, and composited to a 0–5 Moat Strength. Every company's scorecard shows the rationale for each number. Readers can rate the same eight questions on any company page; the community score is the average of those votes, computed identically.

Dimension	The question	Weight
Switching costs	How painful — in money, time, risk, retraining — is it for a customer to leave?	15
Network effects	Does each additional user, developer, or partner make the product more valuable to the others?	15
Scale & cost advantage	Can they deliver the same thing structurally cheaper than any challenger, because of size?	12
Brand & pricing power	Can they raise or hold premium prices without losing customers?	12
Cornered resource	Do they control something rivals cannot buy or build — IP, data, licenses, talent, exclusive supply?	12
Distribution control	Do they own the surface, channel, or default through which customers arrive?	12
Disruption resilience	How hard is it for a new business model — not just a better product — to attack them?	12
Independence	How free are they from a single regulator, platform owner, or supplier who could change the rules?	10

0–1 Exposed1–2 Thin2–3 Solid3–4 Deep4–5 Fortress