This Company Just Paid Out $6.8 Billion. Its AI Bill Was 4x That

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) went ex-dividend on August 20, 2026 at $0.91 a share, cutting a check to holders of record for $6,757,245,950, payable September 10, 2026. That single distribution was the largest of the 26 companies going ex-dividend that day, and it dwarfed the runner-up: Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) at $420,798,270. Marriott (NASDAQ:MAR), SBA Communications (NASDAQ:SBAC), and LKQ (NASDAQ:LKQ) also went ex-dividend the same day, but none came close to Microsoft’s scale.

In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, Microsoft’s capital expenditures ran to $115.948 billion, up from $64,551,000,000 a year earlier. Dividends paid for the full year were $26.445 billion. That is roughly four and a half dollars of capex for every dollar returned to shareholders. Operating cash flow of $182.935 billion financed it, but free cash flow still declined 6.46% year over year.

September Is the Date Circled on Every Income Investor’s Calendar

Microsoft has now paid $0.91 per share for four consecutive quarters, with ex-dates of November 20, 2025, February 19, 2026, May 21, 2026, and August 20, 2026. The board has historically telegraphed its annual raise in mid-September: last year’s step-up from $0.83 to $0.91 was declared September 15, 2025. That leaves the September announcement as the live question. Redmond is not signaling stress. On the fiscal fourth-quarter call, CFO Amy Hood said Microsoft returned “over $43 billion” to shareholders during the fiscal year through dividends and repurchases, and forecast that the company will “remain free cash flow positive in FY27”. But she also flagged that fiscal 2027 capex “will grow year over year, given demand signals across our portfolio”, with the operating-lease shift bringing the reported figure closer to approximately $175 billion. All of that spend has to be powered, cooled, and networked by somebody, and we pulled together seven suppliers doing exactly that in a free AI infrastructure report.

How Microsoft’s Capital Split Compares

Amazon reported $131.819 billion of capex for 2025 and paid no dividend at all. Alphabet reported $91.447 billion of capex for 2025 and paid $10.049 billion in dividends. Meta reported $69.691 billion of capex and $5.324 billion in dividends. Microsoft is spending more than any of them and still writing the largest check to holders.

Shares Lag While Capex Surges

Shares closed at $481.15 on August 20, 2026, down 3.91% over one year and up 0.12% year to date, though a 21.2% one-month bounce has partly restored sentiment. Backing the spend: Azure crossed $100 billion in annual revenue, Copilot passed 30 million paid seats, and commercial RPO hit $678 billion, up 84%. CEO Satya Nadella framed the trade directly: “We are advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve, ensuring every customer can turn tokens into business results.” Whether that curve bends fast enough to protect the September dividend cadence is the number investors will be watching.

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