The full story
Cash on hand (30 Sep 2026), and what the last 12 months added or took away after paying for data centers and chips:
- Google: $265B, +$20B
- Amazon: $114B, −$47B
- Meta: $82B, +$29B
- Microsoft: $65B, +$60B
- Oracle: $37B, −$29B (12 months to 31 Aug), about three-quarters of its pile
Why: AI building. Amazon spent $215B on property and equipment in 12 months, more than the $168B of cash its business brought in.
The catch: piles also move with buybacks, dividends, debt and share sales. Google's grew partly because it sold $42.9B of new stock this year. And spending a pile down to build is a choice, not a failure.
Our measure is operating cash flow minus capital spending, the same for all five. Amazon's own free cash flow figure, which also counts some sales and incentives, is −$42.4B.
