The library
Independent teardowns · filter by sector, region or ownership.
A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S
The Danish shipping bellwether whose profits swing violently with freight rates — now pivoting from ocean carrier to door-to-door integrator.
Read the teardown →Adobe
Record $23.8B revenue, ~89% margins — priced at a decade-low multiple on AI-disruption fear.
Read the teardown →Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
The clear #2 in AI compute — and the debate over whether it can close the gap with NVIDIA.
Read the teardown →Airbnb, Inc.
The cereal-box startup that became travel's brand verb — now betting beyond stays into a profitable, slower-growing super-app.
Read the teardown →Alibaba Group
Independent, source-cited case study of Alibaba's commerce, AI and cloud bet.
Read the teardown →Alo Yoga (Color Image Apparel)
Founder-owned, influencer-built activewear brand taking premium share from Lululemon.
Read the teardown →Alphabet Inc. (Google)
Independent, neutral, fully-cited case study of Alphabet/Google.
Read the teardown →Amazon.com, Inc.
The profit engine behind the retailer, AWS, advertising, and the AI capex bet.
Read the teardown →ANTA Sports (安踏体育)
China's #1 sportswear group — a multi-brand machine (ANTA, FILA, Arc'teryx) testing whether an acquired portfolio can globalize as its home engines mature.
Read the teardown →Anthropic
AI safety lab behind Claude, now one of the fastest-scaling AI companies
Read the teardown →Apple Inc.
The most profitable hardware company ever — and the durability debate over AI, Services, and China.
Read the teardown →Applied Materials, Inc.
The broadest toolmaker behind every chip — betting that materials engineering, not just lithography, wins the AI era.
Read the teardown →Arm Holdings plc
The architecture tax on computing — inside ~99% of phones, now re-rated for AI.
Read the teardown →ASML Holding N.V.
The sole maker of EUV lithography — the indispensable, and most contested, link in the chip supply chain.
Read the teardown →Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The $1T conglomerate Buffett built — now run by Greg Abel, with a record cash pile and a 60-year record to defend.
Read the teardown →BHP Group
"The Big Australian" — the world's largest miner, pivoting from Pilbara iron ore toward copper and potash while a £36bn dam-disaster judgment hangs over it.
Read the teardown →Booking Holdings Inc.
The world's largest OTA — a record travel cash machine facing the AI-agent disintermediation question.
Read the teardown →Broadcom Inc.
An M&A roll-up turned the #2 winner of the AI build-out — and the debate over how durable that is.
Read the teardown →BYD Company Ltd (比亚迪)
World's largest new-energy vehicle maker — from batteries to cars to ships.
Read the teardown →ByteDance (字节跳动)
Independent, fully-cited case study of ByteDance: Douyin/TikTok, ads, e-commerce, Doubao AI, and the TikTok divestiture.
Read the teardown →Canva
The Australian freemium-design giant betting that AI is its tailwind, not its undoing — profitable, private, and circling an IPO.
Read the teardown →CATL — Contemporary Amperex Technology (宁德时代)
The world's largest EV and energy-storage battery maker — dominant, profitable, and contested.
Read the teardown →CAVA Group, Inc.
The 'next Chipotle' of Mediterranean food — first $1B year and reaccelerating traffic, priced for perfection.
Read the teardown →Chagee (霸王茶姬)
China's guofeng 'original-leaf fresh-milk-tea' chain that IPO'd on Nasdaq in 2025 — record scale and the best margins in tea, then eight straight quarters of falling single-store sales.
Read the teardown →Chipotle Mexican Grill
The fast-casual giant after its first same-store sales decline since 2016 — cyclical dip or structural slowdown?
Read the teardown →Cisco Systems, Inc.
The 40-year networking incumbent betting an AI 'super-cycle' will finally outrun its dot-com ghost.
Read the teardown →Cloudflare
The network in front of ~20% of the web — $2.2B revenue, ~$90B value, ~40× sales.
Read the teardown →Coherent Corp.
A vertically integrated photonics maker riding the AI-datacenter optics boom — and a debt-laden merger still being turned around.
Read the teardown →Coinbase Global, Inc.
The largest US crypto exchange, trying to outgrow the boom-bust cycle it rides.
Read the teardown →Compagnie de Saint-Gobain
The 360-year-old French glassmaker reborn as the world's light & sustainable construction leader.
Read the teardown →Corning Incorporated
175-year-old glass/ceramics platform — Gorilla Glass, optical fiber, display — re-rated by the AI data-center fiber boom.
Read the teardown →Costco Wholesale Corporation
Membership-only warehouse retailer with a fee-driven moat and thin-margin model.
Read the teardown →Coupang, Inc. (쿠팡)
Korea's Amazon — a dominant owned-logistics platform, but concentrated in one market.
Read the teardown →Databricks
The lakehouse pioneer turned AI platform — $5.4B run-rate, $134B private, still pre-IPO.
Read the teardown →DeepSeek (深度求索)
The High-Flyer-backed lab whose low-cost open models triggered AI's 'Sputnik moment'.
Read the teardown →Deere & Company (John Deere)
The 1837 plow-maker now betting its future on autonomy and per-acre software revenue.
Read the teardown →Discord Inc.
The voice-and-community platform for 200M+ users, racing to monetize ahead of a 2026 IPO.
Read the teardown →DoorDash, Inc.
The US delivery leader that lost money for a decade, finally turned a profit, and is buying its way global.
Read the teardown →DSV A/S
The Danish roll-up that bought its way to world No. 1 — and just swallowed DB Schenker.
Read the teardown →Duolingo, Inc.
The gamified language app that won its category — now testing whether AI is its moat or its disruptor.
Read the teardown →Epic Games, Inc.
The Fortnite maker that owns the engine, runs a store and is fighting Apple — now cutting costs as Fortnite engagement cools.
Read the teardown →Figma
The collaborative-design standard — a 2025 IPO darling now priced for AI disruption.
Read the teardown →Fishwife Tinned Seafood Co.
Design-led premium tinned-seafood brand reviving a commodity category.
Read the teardown →Freeport-McMoRan Inc.
The leading US-listed copper producer, levered to an electrification-and-AI demand thesis — and to the single Indonesian mine that just suffered a fatal collapse.
Read the teardown →GEA Group AG
The quiet German engineer that turned seven profit warnings into a DAX seat — now betting Mission 30 isn't a cyclical peak.
Read the teardown →Geberit AG
Europe's behind-the-wall plumbing near-monopoly — testing pricing power against a weak building cycle.
Read the teardown →Glencore plc
The world's largest integrated miner-and-trader, caught between coal cash and a copper future.
Read the teardown →GXO Logistics, Inc.
The world's largest pure-play contract logistics provider — blue-chip warehouses, robots, and thin margins.
Read the teardown →Halma plc
A FTSE 100 serial acquirer of niche safety, health and environmental instrument businesses — 46 years of dividend growth, now re-rated on AI-photonics.
Read the teardown →Huawei (华为)
Independent, fully-cited case study of Huawei: sanctions, self-reliance, chips, HarmonyOS, telecom, devices and the recovery.
Read the teardown →Instacart (Maplebear Inc.)
The company that built U.S. online grocery — now a profitable ad business defending its app from AI.
Read the teardown →Intel Corporation
The fallen x86 giant betting its turnaround on 18A, a foundry, and Washington's backing.
Read the teardown →International Business Machines (IBM)
The 114-year-old incumbent, re-accelerating on Red Hat, the mainframe and a $12.5B AI book.
Read the teardown →Intuitive Surgical, Inc.
The company that created robotic surgery — defending a razor-and-blade franchise as the first real rivals and a softening growth story arrive at once.
Read the teardown →Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.
A Robert Friedland–founded copper miner with a world-class DRC orebody, an equity-accounted flagship, and a 2025 disruption that reset its growth path.
Read the teardown →Judges Scientific (JDG)
A disciplined UK micro-cap 'buy-and-build' compounder of niche scientific-instrument firms — testing whether the small-acquisition model keeps compounding as it scales and organic growth softens.
Read the teardown →KONE Oyj
A high-quality elevator oligopolist with a resilient service annuity, weighed against its China-property overhang.
Read the teardown →Kweichow Moutai (贵州茅台)
The world's most valuable liquor maker posts its first revenue and profit decline since listing, as China's baijiu boom breaks.
Read the teardown →Lasertec Corporation (レーザーテック)
The quiet monopoly on inspecting EUV photomasks — record profits, an order cliff, and a short-seller's fraud claim it survived.
Read the teardown →Li Auto Inc. (理想汽车)
China's range-extender EV pioneer — first new-force to profit, now stalling as the moat erodes.
Read the teardown →Lucid Group
The most efficient EV on the road — built by a company that loses money on every one it sells.
Read the teardown →Luckin Coffee (瑞幸咖啡)
The chain that faked $310M in sales and was delisted, then came back to out-store and out-sell Starbucks in China — now squeezed by its own price war.
Read the teardown →lululemon athletica inc.
The brand that defined premium athleisure — now testing whether its moat survives a stalling core market.
Read the teardown →Lumentum Holdings Inc.
An AI-datacenter optics chip leader re-rated 11x — riding the EML boom while a lumpy telecom legacy fades.
Read the teardown →LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton)
The world's largest luxury group — 75+ maisons, family-controlled, through a two-year luxury slowdown.
Read the teardown →Lyft, Inc.
North America's #2 rideshare app — now profitable, going global, and racing the robotaxi clock.
Read the teardown →Mars, Incorporated
The M&M's company that mostly sells pet food — a $55B family empire making its biggest-ever bet.
Read the teardown →Mastercard
The world's #2 card network — high-margin rails under pressure from regulators and new payment systems.
Read the teardown →Meituan (美团)
China's dominant local-services super-app — and the target of 2025's food-delivery price war.
Read the teardown →MercadoLibre
Latin America's e-commerce + fintech flywheel — record revenue, compressing margins, a fast-growing loan book.
Read the teardown →Meta Platforms, Inc.
An ad business funding a large bet on AI and hardware.
Read the teardown →Micron Technology
Independent, fully-cited teardown of the only US-based memory maker, riding the AI/HBM supercycle.
Read the teardown →Microsoft Corporation
The world's most diversified tech giant, betting the franchise on AI.
Read the teardown →MiniMax (稀宇科技)
How a Chinese AI 'six tiger' raced to a Hong Kong IPO on overseas consumer apps and low-cost open models.
Read the teardown →Mistral AI
Europe's frontier-AI champion — open-weight roots, sovereign ambitions, and a €11.7B valuation on a fraction of US rivals' revenue.
Read the teardown →MongoDB Inc.
The developer-favorite document database, betting its cloud-and-AI future against a surging PostgreSQL.
Read the teardown →Moonshot AI (Kimi / 月之暗面)
Maker of the Kimi assistant and open-weight K2 models, one of China's AI 'tigers'.
Read the teardown →Nemetschek SE
The 'AEC Adobe' — a sticky, family-controlled BIM-software compounder versus a contested premium.
Read the teardown →Netflix, Inc.
The profit leader in streaming — now facing maturing growth, an ads bet, and the Warner Bros. it walked away from.
Read the teardown →Neuralink Corp.
Elon Musk's brain-implant company: real first patients vs. a years-away, hype-laden roadmap.
Read the teardown →Nickelodeon
The slime-green empire of owned kids' IP, past its linear peak and inside Paramount Skydance.
Read the teardown →NIKE, Inc.
The world's #1 sportswear brand, mid-turnaround — testing whether scale and a back-to-sport reset can outrun lost cool, China, and tariffs.
Read the teardown →NIO (蔚来)
China's premium EV maker reached its first-ever quarterly profit in 2025 — after a decade of >RMB 100B losses.
Read the teardown →Notion Labs, Inc.
How Notion repositioned from all-in-one workspace to AI company, 2020–2026.
Read the teardown →Novo Nordisk A/S
The company that built the obesity-drug era on Ozempic and Wegovy — now fighting to keep the lead it created.
Read the teardown →Nubank (Nu Holdings Ltd.)
Latin America's largest neobank, scaling fast into its first real credit-cycle test.
Read the teardown →OLIPOP PBC
The prebiotic-soda upstart that built a category — now defending it against Coke and PepsiCo.
Read the teardown →On Holding AG (On)
The Federer-backed Swiss running brand the market can't decide how to price.
Read the teardown →OpenAI
Maker of ChatGPT — the world's most valuable private company, and its defining tension.
Read the teardown →Oracle Corporation
A 49-year-old database giant betting the balance sheet on an AI-cloud boom.
Read the teardown →Palantir Technologies
The most expensive stock in software, and one of the most contested — ~$4.5B revenue, ~70× sales.
Read the teardown →PayPal Holdings, Inc.
The original fintech, deeply out of favor — a profit machine on its third CEO in three years.
Read the teardown →PDD Holdings
Parent of Pinduoduo and cross-border discount app Temu.
Read the teardown →Perplexity AI
The best-known independent AI 'answer engine', racing the model-owning giants it rents from.
Read the teardown →Pfizer Inc.
Life after the COVID windfall — a deep-value dividend giant racing a patent cliff.
Read the teardown →poppi (prebiotic soda)
A kitchen experiment turned $1.95B PepsiCo brand — and the debate over the science behind it.
Read the teardown →Ramp
A corporate card turned AI-first finance platform, valued at $44B on a thin-margin interchange core.
Read the teardown →Rational AG
The ~50%-share German 'hidden champion' of combi-ovens — niche dominance vs. its ceiling.
Read the teardown →Reddit, Inc.
The 20-year community forum that turned into a profitable ad engine and the most-cited source in AI answers.
Read the teardown →Rio Tinto Group
The world's #2 miner — a low-cost Pilbara iron-ore engine diversifying into copper and lithium, while social-licence scars and a softening China shadow the story.
Read the teardown →Rivian Automotive
First gross profit, but it came from software — can the R2 finally make the cars pay?
Read the teardown →Rogo
Agentic AI for investment banks, PE and hedge funds — a $2B vertical-AI bet on Wall Street's grunt work.
Read the teardown →Salesforce, Inc.
The CRM leader betting its growth on AI agents — as investors ask if those same agents kill per-seat SaaS.
Read the teardown →Schneider Electric SE
The 189-year-old French electrification champion riding the AI data-center power boom.
Read the teardown →Sea Limited
Southeast Asia's three-engine internet group — now profitable, but priced for a fight with TikTok Shop.
Read the teardown →ServiceNow, Inc.
The dominant enterprise-workflow platform betting its next decade on agentic AI — as the market debates whether AI lifts or erodes per-seat SaaS.
Read the teardown →Shein (希音)
China-born, Singapore-based ultra-fast-fashion giant shipping cheap apparel direct to 150+ countries.
Read the teardown →Shin-Etsu Chemical (信越化学工業)
The quiet Japanese giant that is world No.1 in both PVC and semiconductor silicon.
Read the teardown →Shopify Inc.
The merchant's arms dealer against Amazon — and the debate over its ~100× multiple.
Read the teardown →Siemens AG
A 178-year-old industrial giant remaking itself into a software-and-AI 'ONE Tech Company'.
Read the teardown →SMIC (中芯国际)
Independent, fully-cited teardown of China's flagship chip foundry — record revenue, an EUV-less frontier, and a sanctions-shadowed future.
Read the teardown →Southern Copper Corporation
The lowest-cost major in copper, holder of the industry's largest reserves — controlled ~89% by Grupo México, with its growth pipeline gated by political and social risk in Peru and Mexico.
Read the teardown →SpaceX
The reusable-rocket monopoly that became a satellite-internet giant — and is chasing a ~$1.75T IPO.
Read the teardown →Spectris plc
UK precision-instruments group (Malvern Panalytical, HBK) taken private by KKR after a PE bidding war.
Read the teardown →Spotify Technology S.A.
The world's largest music streamer — finally, durably profitable, yet still renting its catalogue from the labels and feuding with its artists.
Read the teardown →Starbucks Corporation
Record revenue, halved profit: inside the 'Back to Starbucks' turnaround, the China sale, and the longest barista strike in its history.
Read the teardown →Stripe
The developer-first payments platform processing ~1.6% of global GDP — and still private.
Read the teardown →Substack Inc.
How Substack turned paid newsletters into a $1.1B network — and the gap between that price and ~$45M of revenue.
Read the teardown →Sweetgreen, Inc.
The premium-salad chain betting automation can fix a traffic collapse — comps down double digits, stock off ~85%.
Read the teardown →Tencent Holdings
Independent, fully-cited case study of Tencent: WeChat moat, games, fintech, AI.
Read the teardown →Tesla, Inc.
EV pioneer turned AI/robotics bet — two years of falling deliveries against a ~$1.5T valuation priced on autonomy.
Read the teardown →The Boeing Company
Aerospace duopolist rebuilding from the 737 MAX safety and financial crisis.
Read the teardown →The Boring Company
Elon Musk's tunnelling venture — tunnel disruption, or transportation vaporware?
Read the teardown →The Hershey Company
America's chocolate giant — record sales, a cocoa-crushed bottom line, and a charity trust that won't let anyone buy it.
Read the teardown →The Walt Disney Company
A century-old IP empire pivoting from cable to streaming while parks quietly carry the profit.
Read the teardown →Toast, Inc.
Cloud restaurant OS that bundles POS, software and payments — profitable, but priced like it must keep sprinting.
Read the teardown →Toyota Motor Corporation
The world's #1 automaker betting that 'multi-pathway' beats going all-in on EVs.
Read the teardown →Trader Joe's
The 'anti-grocer': ~4,000 mostly private-label items, no e-commerce, and the highest sales per square foot in US grocery.
Read the teardown →TSMC (台積電)
Independent, fully-cited teardown of the foundry that makes the AI era's chips — and its three open questions.
Read the teardown →Uber Technologies, Inc.
The global mobility-and-delivery platform that finally turned a profit — now staring down the robotaxi.
Read the teardown →Unitree Robotics (宇树科技)
China's volume leader in low-cost quadruped and humanoid robots.
Read the teardown →Visa Inc.
The toll road on global consumption — a wide-moat network now fighting antitrust and the rise of account-to-account rails.
Read the teardown →Walmart Inc.
The world's largest retailer remaking itself into an ads-and-membership platform — now priced like one.
Read the teardown →Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.
A century of IP — HBO, DC, Warner Bros. — sold into the streaming wars.
Read the teardown →Waymo
Alphabet's robotaxi unit — the clear leader in driverless ride-hailing at 450K+ weekly rides, valued at $126B, and still deeply unprofitable.
Read the teardown →Workday, Inc.
The cloud-HR & finance leader for big enterprises — profitable and sticky, now testing whether AI agents are its growth engine or the thing that compresses its seat-based model.
Read the teardown →xAI (Grok)
Musk's AI lab — Grok, the Colossus supercomputer, and the X merger, now SpaceX's AI division.
Read the teardown →Xiaohongshu (RedNote)
China's lifestyle-and-'种草' community turned ad-and-commerce engine — newly profitable, IPO-bound, and wrestling with its own authenticity.
Read the teardown →ZEISS SMT (Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH)
The invisible optics monopoly that makes EUV — and the leading-edge chip industry — possible.
Read the teardown →Zhipu AI (智谱AI / Z.ai)
The world's first listed LLM maker — a Tsinghua-bred open-weight champion that loses billions to build it.
Read the teardown →ZIM Integrated Shipping Services (ZIM / צים)
The asset-light Israeli box line: a huge variable dividend, brutal cyclicality, and a $4.2bn exit.
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