All three hyperscalers reported in the same week and tell the same story with different nuances: hundreds of billions in contracted compute demand, but only Microsoft paid for its capex with positive free cash flow. Here's the side-by-side comparison, with the caveats on each number.
The Side-by-Side Table
These figures come from each company's reports, as summarized in our individual articles (Alphabet and Microsoft on October 28; Meta on October 21). Fiscal calendars and capex definitions aren't identical, so the table is useful for orders of magnitude, not for subtracting numbers across columns.
Backlog, RPO and Commitments Are Not the Same Thing
Alphabet and Microsoft are talking about customer contracts that will turn into revenue (Cloud backlog and commercial RPO). The $825 billion cited for Meta, by contrast, is Meta's own spending commitments on data centers, power and compute, and another source puts it at $454.5 billion. Comparing Meta's number with the other two would mix future revenue with future spending, which is why we flag it separately.
Who Funds It, and How
Microsoft is the only one with positive free cash flow, though it said it may turn to external financing. Alphabet holds $265.1 billion in cash and investments against $125.1 billion of long-term debt, and it didn't repurchase shares this quarter. Meta, with negative free cash flow for the first time since 2012, plans new Class C shares and, per our article on its offering, a stock issuance. Three different routes to the same problem: compute is increasingly paid for with something other than operating cash flow.
The market reaction fit that picture: Meta fell about 7% after its report and Alphabet fell about 10% in after-hours trading (a preliminary figure). Microsoft beat revenue and EPS estimates; we found no verifiable figure for its price reaction.
How This Works: Contracted Demand Is Not Delivered Capacity
All three companies said, one way or another, that demand exceeds supply. Microsoft attributed part of the delay to third-party capacity. That means the bottleneck isn't the order but the chain of chips, memory and power, and a new customer competes with contracts already signed.
Sources: Guatemalia articles on Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta (based on Yahoo Finance, GuruFocus, Senanni, Motley Fool, 24/7 Wall St., investingLive and FourWeekMBA).