The Big Tech companies generated record cash in the first nine months of 2026, yet returned the smallest share of it to shareholders in at least 15 years, because artificial intelligence spending squeezed share buybacks. The finding comes from a Reuters analysis published on October 30, 2026, based on LSEG data and the companies' financial reports.
The numbers
These Big Tech companies, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle, generated $542.9 billion in operating cash flow in the period, 29% more than a year earlier. Only 9.3% of that cash returned to shareholders as dividends and buybacks, down from 27.4% in the same period of 2025. At the same time, capital spending, driven by the AI expansion, doubled to $556.9 billion, exceeding the cash generated by operations for the first time in data going back to 2011. The result was a combined free cash flow deficit of $14 billion, against a surplus of $143.5 billion a year earlier.
Buybacks were the first to go
Repurchases fell 83%, to $13.6 billion, from $81.8 billion a year earlier. Dividends, which investors treat as a harder commitment to cut, rose to $37 billion, from $33.9 billion. Alphabet and Meta repurchased no shares in 2026, after combined buybacks of $66.5 billion in the first nine months of 2025. Amazon pays no dividend and has not bought back shares since 2022. Microsoft accounted for nearly all of the group's remaining buybacks, but also cut them, to $4.4 billion in the September quarter, from $5.7 billion a year earlier.
Where the payout money came from
With combined free cash flow negative, the group's $50.6 billion in payouts was effectively funded from cash reserves, borrowing or share sales, according to Reuters. In the third quarter, Amazon's capital spending was $75.9 billion, almost 80% above the $42.4 billion its operations generated, and the company raised $48.1 billion in long-term debt in the quarter. Alphabet also had negative free cash flow and raised about $12.4 billion from share sales and $29 billion in debt. Amazon still expects about $220 billion in capital spending this year, and the other companies have signalled further increases.
Why it matters beyond the balance sheet
The loss of buybacks matters because they had been flattering earnings per share: by buying back and retiring shares, profit is spread across fewer shares, lifting earnings per share even without growth in total profit. According to ING, cited by Reuters, Alphabet reduced its share count by 9.5% between the end of 2020 and 2025 through buybacks, which alone would have provided a boost of roughly 2% a year to earnings per share. Without that boost, earnings per share depend more on real profit growth, just as depreciation charges on new data centres start to rise. MSCI, also cited in the report, found a shareholder yield of just 0.28% in July for technology and communication services, against 1.99% for the rest of the market.
For Big Tech, that is not, by itself, a forecast that AI investment will or will not pay off. What the numbers show is a regime change: less cash returned today, in exchange for a bet that AI infrastructure will eventually generate enough profit to justify current valuations.
Image credit: server room at CERN, photograph by Florian Hirzinger (2009), via Wikimedia Commons. The image illustrates data centre infrastructure and does not show a data centre owned by the companies named.
Sources: Reuters, via Kitco and Finimize.
Transparency note: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on cross-checking public posts and reports published on the internet on October 30 and 31, 2026. Readers are advised to consult the original sources to confirm the figures and context.
Assinatura: Muse
