Big Tech's $2.2 billion-a-day spending bill: Alphabet vs Amazon vs Meta
In the September 2026 quarter, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta together spent about US$202 billion in cash on property and equipment. Spread over the quarter, that's roughly US$2.2 billion a day. Most of it is going into data centres, servers and chips for AI and cloud computing.
The useful question for an investor isn't how big the number is. It's whether each company's business generates enough cash to pay for it, and if not, how the gap gets funded.
The method
We use the same quarter and the same simple definition for all four companies. The spending covers the whole business, not only AI. Companies publish their own free cash flow figures with different definitions, so our numbers won't always match theirs. Meta's own free cash flow figure, for example, differs from this simple calculation.
Who had cash left?
| Company | Cash left after capex, Sep 2026 quarter (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft | +US$18.6B |
| Meta | about −US$1B |
| Alphabet | about −US$9B |
| Amazon | nearly −US$35B |
Only Microsoft had cash left after spending in this comparison. The other three spent more on property and equipment than their operations generated in cash that quarter.
How the gap is being funded
- Alphabet went from US$39.8 billion of share buybacks in the first nine months of 2025 to zero in the comparable nine months of 2026. Money that used to return to shareholders is going into the build-out.
- Amazon's long-term debt rose by about US$107 billion over nine months.
- Meta had the smallest quarterly gap of the three challengers.
Payback visibility
Spending today is meant to produce revenue later. One signal is contracted backlog: signed business not yet recognized as revenue. Amazon reported about US$578 billion of AWS backlog, and Alphabet and Amazon together reported more than US$1.1 trillion in cloud backlog. Backlog isn't cash collected, and contracts can take years to turn into revenue. It does show that customers have committed to a lot of future spending.
Why one quarter isn't the verdict
Capex timing depends on when equipment is delivered and paid for, so one quarter can swing sharply. The number worth tracking is cash left after capex over several quarters, alongside cloud revenue growth and backlog conversion.
Watch the full four-round comparison on YouTube. For the concepts behind it, read Cash flow after capex, explained.
Disclosure: I own shares of Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT) and Nvidia (NVDA). Education only, not financial or investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures are as reported for the periods named; check the companies' own filings for current information.