Apple posted record September-quarter sales and $30.7 billion in profit while spending a sliver of what its rivals pour into data centers. Memory costs are the catch.
StockPizza Desk · 2 Nov 2026 · 4 min readAmazon earned $28 billion in operating profit last quarter, yet it is spending so much on data centers that it now burns more cash than ever before.
Growth sped up to 3.4% on AI equipment, stockpiling and steady consumers, while quarterly inflation cooled. But demand is running hot, and markets still expect a rate hike in December.
Alphabet had its biggest quarter ever, but the AI build-out is eating into its margins and cash flow faster than the new business pays it back.
In the same AI spending race, Microsoft’s operations still cover the bill with cash to spare, while Alphabet’s cash flow has turned negative.
The Claude maker’s S-1 shows revenue up fourteenfold in a year, a first operating profit and hundreds of billions in compute contracts. Growth is cooling just as those contracts start to bill.
Google and Meta give away search, social media and maps, then charge advertisers to reach the people who use them.