Four Ways to Build A Moat for Your AI Product

Using AI to Build a Competitive Advantage: Four Strategies for Creating a Moat with AI Products

Andrei Lyskov
2 min readDec 2, 2022

A moat is a term used in the business world to refer to a competitive advantage that a company has over its rivals. In the context of AI products, a moat can refer to the ways in which a company uses AI to create unique and valuable offerings that are difficult for competitors to replicate.

There are several ways in which a company can build a moat with AI products. Here are four examples:

  1. Exclusive access to data: One way to build a moat with AI products is to have exclusive access to large and high-quality datasets. This can give a company a significant advantage in terms of the accuracy and performance of its AI products, as well as the ability to create new and innovative offerings.
  2. Intellectual property: Another way to build a moat is through the development of intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. This can protect a company’s unique AI technologies and prevent competitors from copying or using them without permission.
  3. Strong partnerships and collaborations: Building strong partnerships and collaborations with other companies and organizations can also help to create a moat. For example, a company might partner with a research institution to access cutting-edge AI technologies, or collaborate with a large customer to co-develop AI products.
  4. Network effects: Finally, a company can build a moat through the creation of network effects. This occurs when the value of a product or service increases as more people use it, creating a virtuous cycle where more users attract more users. For example, a social media platform that uses AI to personalize content and recommendations might be more appealing to users than a competitor’s platform, leading to more users and greater value for the company.

In summary, building a moat with AI products can be achieved through a combination of exclusive access to data, intellectual property, strong partnerships and collaborations, and network effects. These strategies can help a company create unique and valuable offerings that are difficult for competitors to replicate.

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Andrei Lyskov

Data Scientist at Block writing about Data Science, Quantified Self, Philosophy and other topics I find interesting. Previously worked at Apple and Coinbase.