It is one of the two obvious economies of scale for pure software companies (along with network effects). I can't think of a company that should not have ML in

It is one of the two obvious economies of scale for pure software companies (along with network effects). I can't think of a company that should not have ML in their long-term plan. Some people probably talk about it without truly understanding it (it can take years before you have enough data to build good ML models, particularly if there are seasonal trends), but I certainly wouldn't judge a company poorly for seeing ML as an important long-term moat. I would judge a young company that sees it as a short-term moat - if you can acquire valuable data quickly, so can your competitors and it's not really an economy of scale that gives you defensibility.