One of the eleven dimensions behind the Cyborg Score (1-10).
Written by AskCyborg Research. Last reviewed 2026-09-03.
Who the company actually competes with by name, what share it holds, what would stop a competitor taking that share, and whether the barrier is real or asserted.
Each dimension is argued before it is scored. A panel of AI analysts takes opposing positions on the material claims in that dimension — the case for, the case against, and the risks neither side raised first — and each claim is challenged, defended, and either survives or is rewritten. The dimension score reflects what survived, weighted by the confidence rating attached to the surviving evidence. The overall Cyborg Score is the synthesis across all eleven, so a single strong dimension does not carry a company and a single weak one does not sink it. The same company put through the same framework produces the same score.
The score rises when competitors are named and the barrier is mechanical — something a rival would have to build, buy, or wait for. It falls when the moat is a restatement of the product, when the named competitors are the obvious large ones and the real substitute goes unmentioned, or when share is claimed against a market defined narrowly enough to make the claim true by construction.
Every material claim carries a confidence rating, and the rating is about evidence, not about tone. High confidence means the claim is supported by disclosed, checkable material and survived a challenge from the opposing analyst. Medium means it held up but rests on partial or single-source evidence, and the caveat travels with it. Low means the claim is directionally supported and could not be confirmed — it is kept because omitting it would be a different kind of dishonesty, and it is labelled so it is never read as settled. A dimension scored on low-confidence evidence gets a middling score rather than a strong one: thin evidence is scored as thin evidence, not as bad news and not as good news.
Market-share figures for private and fragmented markets are frequently estimates published by an interested party. Where the only available share figure originates with the company or its investors, the dimension is scored on the barrier argument rather than on the number.
A 3 reads like: three large competitors are named, the moat is stated as brand, and the cheaper substitute customers actually switch to is absent from the analysis. Naming big rivals is not the same as showing why they lose.
This example is generic and describes no real company. It is a worked illustration of the reasoning, not a rating of anyone.