2026-02-10 13:20:20

The gold rush killed most miners. It made Levi Strauss rich.

AI agents are today's gold rush. Data moats are the denim.
The Moat Stack:
1. Agent layer → commoditizes in 12-18 months (every framework converges)
2. Workflow layer → moderate moat (integrations are copyable)
3. Data layer → permanent moat (compounds with every interaction)
The proof is already here.
Salesforce Agentforce: $540M ARR, 330% YoY growth, 18,500 deals closed in one year. Not because their AI is better because enterprises already feed them CRM data daily. Every interaction makes the moat deeper.
Intuit just killed QuickBooks Online Accountant for an AI-native suite. Decades of financial data = unchallengeable position.
Gartner says 35% of point-product SaaS gets absorbed by agents by 2030. The key word is "absorbed" by companies that already own the data, not by new entrants building shiny agent wrappers.
If you're building an AI startup, flip the question:
Don't ask "what agent can I build?"
Ask "what data loop can I create that no one else can replicate?"
The agent is the feature. The data is the product.
What's your Levi Strauss play?

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