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AI

Whose tank runs dry

Oracle holds $32bn of cash and its business burned $24bn last year building data centers. That is 74% of the pile.

Numbers as of 27 Aug 2026

The full story

  1. Five tanks show each company's cash and investments on hand, to one scale: Google 242 billion dollars, Amazon 123 billion, Meta 90 billion, Microsoft 77 billion, Oracle 32 billion. Free cash flow over 12 months: Google plus 53 billion, Amazon minus 8 billion, Meta plus 41 billion, Microsoft plus 67
  2. Still filling up: Microsoft spent 41 billion dollars in just three months, up 69 percent from a year ago, on AI chips and servers, mostly GPUs and CPUs, and big leased data center sites. Its business still paid for all of it.
  3. Still filling up: Meta spent 31.1 billion dollars in just three months, 1.8 times a year ago, on servers, data centers and network, including Hyperion in Louisiana, a 2 gigawatt AI data center, and Prometheus in Ohio, a 1 gigawatt AI cluster due in 2026. Its cash still covers it, but only just.
  4. The twist: Google spent 44.9 billion dollars in just three months, twice a year ago; about 60 percent on servers, where its own TPU AI chips are central, and about 40 percent on data centers and networking. Its cash pile still nearly doubled, from about 70 billion raised in June.
  5. Starting to leak: Amazon spent 54.2 billion dollars in just three months, 1.7 times a year ago, on AI data centers for AWS, where it says demand is bigger than its capacity. That pushed its cash flow below zero, and it plans to spend about 220 billion in 2026.
  6. Running dry: Oracle spent 55.7 billion dollars in one year, 2.6 times the year before, on data centers for OpenAI's Stargate, including its flagship site in Abilene, Texas. Its business brought in 32.0 billion, so it plans to raise 40 billion.
  7. The latest quarter: Google burned cash for the first time since its 2004 IPO, minus 5.9 billion dollars of free cash flow. Amazon minus 8.8 billion. Meta plus 0.8 billion, just above zero. Who blinks first on AI spending?
  8. You may never see our page again if you don't follow. Green Owl, where the money goes, weekly.

The water is the cash and investments each company actually holds. The drops are free cash flow — what the business generated over the year after paying for all the building.

Cash on hand, and the year's free cash flow:

Google - $242bn held, +$53bn Amazon - $123bn held, −$7.6bn Meta - $90bn held, +$41bn Microsoft - $77bn held, +$67bn Oracle - $32bn held, −$23.7bn

Against the size of its own pile, Oracle burned 74% in one year. Amazon burned 6%.

Two things this deliberately does not say. First, the drops are not the change in the pile: cash also moves on borrowing, buybacks and dividends. Alphabet's cash went from $127bn to $242bn in six months, and most of that was not the business — it raised $49.6bn of stock and preferred shares in June plus $20.3bn of notes.

Second, nobody has to sit and watch the tank empty. Oracle expects to raise about $40bn in its 2027 financial year. A burn rate is not a countdown.

On the quarter rather than the year the picture is harder: Alphabet posted its first negative free cash flow quarter since its 2004 IPO, at −$5.9bn, and Amazon was −$8.8bn. Meta cleared zero by $0.8bn. Microsoft was the one still comfortably positive.

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Where the numbers come from

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Companies in this picture

AmazonGoogleMetaMicrosoftOracle

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