An investor’s argument with himself about AWS, retail margins, AI spending and whether Amazon’s profit machine is becoming stronger—or merely more expensive Amazon has spent most of its public life teaching investors not to judge it like a normal company. Whenever the profits looked thin, the explanation was that Amazon was investing. Whenever spending looked reckless, the explanation was that Amazon was building infrastructure everyone else would eventually need. Whenever Wall Street asked when the harvest might begin, Amazon planted another forest. Annoyingly, this strategy worked. The company turned an online bookstore into a retail empire, a logistics network, an advertising platform, a subscription ecosystem and the world’s leading cloud-infrastructure business. It built warehouses when skeptics wanted margins, servers when analysts wanted discipline and delivery capacity when investors were still trying to understand why anyone needed a package in less than two days. Now the argu...
Apple has reached the peculiar stage of corporate life where spending $25 billion in a quarter can be described as “returning capital” with the same casual tone I use when returning a borrowed screwdriver. The company buys back shares at a pace that would constitute a sovereign wealth strategy for a small nation, retires them, and proceeds as if nothing especially dramatic happened. Investors nod. Analysts update spreadsheets. Somewhere, an accountant adds another comma and quietly goes for a walk. I understand why the question keeps returning: Has Apple become too dependent on buybacks? It is a fair question because repurchases now occupy an enormous place in Apple’s financial identity. During fiscal 2025, Apple spent $89.3 billion repurchasing 402 million shares. In the first nine months of fiscal 2026, it used another $62.1 billion in cash for buybacks. In April 2026, the board authorized an additional $100 billion repurchase program. These are not decorative numbers. Apple is not b...