See which businesses
are hard to replace.

Broadcom occupies a critical position in the AI hardware stack, supplying custom AI accelerators (XPUs) and networking products that hyperscalers increasingly depend on. The company carries approximately $164.6 billion in remaining performance obligations, including a newly signed long-term custom AI accelerator contract, reflecting customer willingness to commit years of demand to secure supply. Its concentrated manufacturing base and specialized product design create meaningful supply-side leverage.

Broadcom designs custom silicon and networking components used to build large-scale AI computing infrastructure, alongside an infrastructure software business anchored by its VMware acquisition. Rather than owning most fabrication, it relies heavily on outside foundries—chiefly TSMC—to manufacture wafers, while certain specialized components come from its own sole-source internal facilities. As AI buildouts have scaled, top customers have moved beyond ordering chips to seeking leased accelerators and full AI racks, prompting alternative financing arrangements. This shift concentrates both bargaining power and financial exposure across a small set of large buyers and a narrow supplier base.

Amazon Web Services sits at a critical junction in AI compute supply, with two frontier model developers—Anthropic and OpenAI—each committing over $100 billion in multi-year contracts tied specifically to AWS chips and cloud capacity. AWS reports roughly $496 billion in unrecognized customer commitments and is expanding infrastructure aggressively, suggesting demand persistently outpaces available capacity.

Amazon operates AWS, one of the largest cloud infrastructure providers, alongside its retail and fulfillment businesses. The current AI buildout requires vast, specialized compute—graphics processing units and custom AWS chips—plus long-duration energy supply to power data centers. Amazon is funding an accelerating capital program ($98.4 billion in purchases of property and equipment for the first six months of 2026, the majority for AWS), financed partly through large multi-currency debt issuances, while securing electricity through contracts extending up to 20 years. These commitments position AWS as a gatekeeper for AI compute capacity that is currently supply-constrained.

Micron is one of a small number of producers of advanced DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), where AI-driven demand is reportedly outpacing industry supply. This scarcity has translated into multi-year take-or-pay customer agreements with floor pricing, and Q3 fiscal 2026 gross margins reached 85%. The company's position at the intersection of memory supply and AI compute makes it a potential capacity chokepoint.

Memory is a historically cyclical, capital-intensive industry dominated by a handful of large manufacturers. HBM, used in AI accelerators, requires more wafer capacity and cleanroom space per bit than conventional DRAM, tightening effective supply. Micron is expanding globally—fabs in Idaho, New York, Taiwan, Singapore, India, and Japan—supported by CHIPS Act funding of up to $6.4 billion and a 35% U.S. investment tax credit, though much of this new capacity comes online between 2027 and 2030.

Huntington Ingalls is the largest U.S. military shipbuilder and effectively the sole-source builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and key amphibious ships, as well as principal submarine subcontractor to Electric Boat. With $57.3 billion in backlog and capacity expansion underway, it occupies a structurally constrained position in U.S. naval production that the Navy cannot readily replicate elsewhere.

Constructing nuclear-powered carriers and submarines requires specialized dry docks, nuclear-certified facilities, and a skilled trade workforce that take decades to build. The U.S. maintains only a small number of shipyards capable of this work, and HII operates two of the largest at Newport News and Ingalls. Nearly all revenue (~99%) comes from the U.S. federal government under multi-year contracts, and shipbuilding procurement is set within annual federal defense budgets such as the FY2027 request of $65.8 billion.

BWX Technologies occupies a structurally constrained position in nuclear manufacturing as the only commercial heavy nuclear component manufacturer in North America and a sole-source supplier of naval nuclear reactors and fuel to the U.S. government. Its backlog rose to $8.4 billion at June 30, 2026, and a newly acquired facility was explicitly added to relieve constrained domestic production capacity. Customers, principally the U.S. Navy and nuclear utilities, have limited domestic alternatives on long-duration, largely fixed-price contracts.

BWXT serves the U.S. Department of Energy's Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, the Department of War, NASA and commercial nuclear utilities. The business is split between Government Operations, which supplies proprietary and sole-source naval reactor components and fuel, and Commercial Operations, which manufactures heavy nuclear components and specialized valves and fittings. Government work is predominantly firm-fixed-price and fixed-price incentive fee, and depends on annual Congressional appropriations. In July 2026 the company acquired Precision Components Group to expand its heavy-manufacturing footprint and add U.S. commercial nuclear production capacity to serve growing domestic demand.