How tech won the pandemic
Companies whose very existence involves virtual lives benefited
SAN FRANCISCO >> In April 2020, with 2,000 Americans dying every day of COVID-19, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the world’s richest man, announced he was focusing on people rather than profits. Amazon would spend about $4 billion in the next few months “providing for customers and protecting employees,” he said, wiping out the profit the retailer would have made without the virus.
It was a typically bold Amazon announcement, a shrewd public relations move to sacrifice financial gain at a moment of misery and fear. Bezos said this was “the hardest time we’ve ever faced” and suggested the new approach would extend indefinitely. “If you’re a shareowner in Amazon,” he advised, “you may want to take a seat.”
At the end of July 2020, Amazon announced quarterly results. Rather than earning zero, as Bezos had predicted, it notched an operating profit of $5.8 billion a record for the company.
The months since have established new records. Amazon’s margins, which measure the profit on every dollar of sales, are the highest in the history of the company, which is based in Seattle.
After stepping aside as chief executive early this month, Bezos flew to suborbital space for 10 minutes this week. Upon returning,
he expressed gratitude to those who had fulfilled this lifelong dream. “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, ‘cause you guys paid for all this,” he said.
Bezos, who was not available for comment for this article, was the only chief executive of a tech company to enter zero gravity in his own spaceship in the past year. But Amazon’s pandemic triumph was echoed all over the world of technology companies.
Even as 609,000 Americans have died and the delta variant surges; as corporate bankruptcies hit a peak for the decade; as restaurants, airlines, gyms, conferences, museums, department stores, hotels, movie theaters and amusement parks shut down; and as millions of workers found themselves unemployed, the tech industry flourished.
The combined stock market valuation of Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook increased by about 70% to more than $10 trillion. That is roughly the size of the entire U.S. stock market in 2002. Apple alone has enough cash in its coffers to give $600 to every person in the United States. And in the next week, the big tech companies are expected to report earnings that will eclipse all previous windfalls.
Silicon Valley, still the world headquarters for tech startups, has never seen so much loot. More