AI Bolsters Information Incumbents' Moats; RELX Plc Set to Benefit

How AI reinforces information incumbents’ competitive moats, not erodes them

Bernstein is advancing a view that matters directly to RELX Plc’s markets: artificial intelligence is acting as an augmenting technology for established information and analytics providers rather than a wholesale disruptor. The research note identifies European businesses with tangible structural advantages that protect them from an “AI scare trade” sweeping parts of the U.S. technology sector. For companies that dominate data, regulatory workflows and professional services — the same spaces RELX operates in — the combination of proprietary content, entrenched customer relationships and embedded workflows creates high switching costs that limit the threat from new AI entrants.

In practice, AI is improving efficiencies in tasks such as document review, search, predictive analytics and scheduling, but Bernstein argues these functions mainly complement incumbents’ offerings. RELX and peers hold curated, labelled datasets, compliance-aware processes and longstanding trust with corporate and legal clients; those attributes make off‑the‑shelf models less able to substitute for specialist platforms. Where AI reduces routine work, it simultaneously raises demand for validated, auditable outputs and human oversight — areas in which established vendors are positioned to sell higher‑value, integrated services rather than lose business to generic models.

The strategic implication for RELX’s industry is clear: incumbents pursue model integration, proprietary model training on unique content, and tighter embedding of AI into user workflows while emphasising data governance and regulatory compliance. Bernstein’s stance points to a market where success comes from combining scale of content, domain expertise and productised AI features that enhance professional productivity. That dynamic supports continued demand for subscription-based legal, scientific and risk tools that are tailored to regulated sectors, rather than a rapid collapse of incumbent business models.

European examples of resilience

Bernstein highlights eight European companies it deems “AI risk‑proof” — from EasyJet and Flughafen Zürich to Merlin Properties and Enagás — arguing each has durable physical or structural moats that AI is unlikely to overturn. The note uses these cases to illustrate how sector specifics and asset intensity can blunt purely software‑centric competitive threats.

Market trigger and investor response

Bernstein links recent U.S. selling in logistics, software, real estate and financials to an “AI scare trade” partly prompted by Anthropic’s new plugin for its Claude agent, seen as a potential rival to established SaaS tools. Aberdeen’s Ben Ritchie adds that recent flows show some indiscriminate selling as investors rush to separate presumed winners from losers in a fast‑changing technology landscape.