Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Zero stroke is an apocryphal condition supposedly seen during times of extreme hyperinflation. Victims, faced with unmanageably large prices, lose their grip on ciphers and find themselves compelled to write strings of zeros at the end of every number. First reported in 1920s Germany, the condition has surfaced anew, in Silicon Valley.Companies such as Apple, Alphabet and Meta Platforms are tossing around 11 and 12-digit sums such that the amounts are losing their power to impress. The maker of iPhones this week said it would invest $500bn in the US over the next four years. Microsoft-backed OpenAI has pledged the same amount for its \u201cStargate\u201d data centre project \u2014 also over four years.They are partly just keeping up with the Joneses. Elsewhere in the tech sector Amazon, Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Microsoft are collectively deploying $320bn on capital expenditure in their current fiscal year \u2014 about 40 per cent more than the previous 12 months, largely on artificial intelligence initiatives. A decade ago they shelled out just $23bn.Still, what\u2019s a few hundred billion in a world that increasingly measures in trillions? Five years ago there were two companies with market capitalisations over $1tn. Today there are 10. Elon Musk casually suggests his carmaker Tesla could hit $10tn. Fund manager James Anderson, an early Tesla backer, thinks chipmaker Nvidia could be worth $50tn in a decade, implying over 30 per cent annual share price growth until then.In many cases, big numbers are more size than substance. The so-called hyperscalers \u2014 Alphabet, Meta and so on \u2014 are building data centres but offer scant detail on their expected financial returns. Apple\u2019s pledge underwhelms in a different way: the $500bn is not new investment, but an estimate of everything it will spend in the US in the next four years, from wages to taxes.Needless to say, this is partly an appeal to an America-first president by a multinational manufacturing company at grave risk from tariffs. During the last Trump administration, Apple boss Tim Cook committed to contribute $350bn to the US economy. Bank of America analysts estimate only half was \u201cdirect spend\u201d, meaning research, development and capital expenditure. Investors should prefer it that way. Apple\u2019s half-trillion is ill-defined but looks to involve more of things it already does \u2014 manufacturing, research, training and hiring, albeit with an AI flavour. Apple also has a record of keeping an eye on shareholders. It spends about $100bn a year on buybacks and dividends, almost three times as much as Meta or Microsoft.As for the hyperscalers, they are going all in on an AI market that\u2019s still in its infancy. Their case of financial \u201czero stroke\u201d is therefore more troubling. Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft shares are down roughly 10 per cent over the past month; Apple\u2019s are up by that much. Cook\u2019s big number is the kind investors can afford to ignore, happily.john.foley@ft.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Zero stroke is an apocryphal condition supposedly seen during times of extreme hyperinflation. Victims, faced with unmanageably large prices, lose their grip on ciphers and find<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-220443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}