The Biggest Burners
Fortune|July 2019

Today’s hot tech stocks may seem to have a lot in common with their now-huge forerunners. But those titans never burned cash like this.

Shawn Tully
The Biggest Burners
INVEST “YOU’VE GOT TO SPEND MONEY to make money” is one of the most widely accepted business adages of all time. And nowhere is that belief more innate than in Silicon Valley, where companies like Tesla, Uber, Lyft, and Snap command dizzying valuations based on the belief that one day, they will indeed make money. Raising fresh billions to fund operations, boosters of these companies would have us believe, is a regular rite of passage. After all, didn’t giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google also burn through tons of cash on their path to profitability?

Fortune decided to find out: How much money did Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google spend in their early years? And how does that compare with what today’s hot names are spending? To get the numbers, we went back to each company’s earliest published financial reports, starting with the offering statements for its IPO.

This story is from the July 2019 edition of Fortune.

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This story is from the July 2019 edition of Fortune.

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