Domain Understanding Is Moat

Author believes wrong.

A moat is having something that others don't, that for would-be competitors is difficult (if not impossible) to replicate.

In this article's example: yes, domain-specific knowledge could be a moat. If it's knowledge your employees have, competitors don't, and would take a lot of effort & time to obtain.

But if same knowledge would be out in the open, waiting to be scraped from the internet on a sunny day, and competitor could derive similar value from it easily, then it's not a moat. Same with

"And may be tomorrow we can have specific chips which will help optimize and solve problem in certain domain."

Sure, that could be a moat if chip is only in your hand, lead times are long, and no competitor got started yet.

But let's assume lead times are short, or competitor is 95% done when you reached 100%, that's no moat. The day is yours, but tomorrow there's 2.

The moat is the time-distance competitors need to get where you are. Well that, or some unique non-public source of info.