Big Tech Deep Research

Understand the businesses behind the biggest technology companies.

This space is for analysts who want evidence they can check, casual investors who want the economics explained, and curious readers who want to know how these companies work.

Created: October 6, 2026 · Initial research cutoff: October 6, 2026

Start reading: NVIDIA — the business behind the AI infrastructure boom. A roughly 15-minute deep dive, with a quick overview, visual financial history, and a practical watchlist.

Explore the first five companies

NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon are now covered. The four new reports each include an original business illustration, three financial charts, three years of results, four recent quarters, product outlook, earnings-call analysis, scenarios, and further reading.

• Interactive explorer — compare all five: filter companies and metrics, inspect historical results, test illustrative growth and margin assumptions, and export data.
• Slideshow — 16 slides of findings: a guided comparison with company profiles, cash-flow analysis, valuation caveats, and an evidence watchlist.
• Shared data and source ledger: reported financials, period ends, calculation definitions, source URLs, and scenario assumptions.

Viewing tip: Stuff supports the slideshow format in its preview. For the explorer's interactive controls, download the original HTML and open it in a browser; Stuff's standard HTML preview does not run embedded scripts. Both HTML files are self-contained, with charts and data available offline. External research links still require an internet connection and any applicable access.

The top 10 by market capitalization

Scope: global, publicly listed technology and technology-led companies, using CompaniesMarketCap's broad “Tech” category. This includes internet platforms, semiconductors, software, and technology-led businesses such as Tesla and SpaceX. It is broader than the formal Information Technology sector. Private-company funding valuations are excluded.

Snapshot: accessed October 6, 2026, before the U.S. market opened. Values are the provider's displayed USD market caps, rounded to three decimal places in trillions; they are not synchronized live quotes. Company-wide equity value is used, with each company counted once. Alphabet's two listed share classes are not two companies.

The coverage universe at a glance. Source: CompaniesMarketCap. Exact figures and research links are in the table.

Ranking and values: CompaniesMarketCap — largest tech companies, accessed October 6, 2026. “T” means trillion dollars.

The order was cross-checked against StockTitan's October 5, 2026 ranking. Its values differ slightly for some companies, including Alphabet and SpaceX; the table consistently uses CompaniesMarketCap rather than mixing providers. SpaceX's public listing was separately verified through Nasdaq's June 12, 2026 announcement.

Market cap measures the stock market's equity valuation, not revenue, profit, enterprise value, or investment attractiveness. Rankings change. Preserve this dated snapshot and refresh it when preparing later coverage; retain existing reports even if a company leaves the top ten.

How every company deep dive should look

Write a complete, readable article of roughly 2,500–3,500 words, with a short opening that works independently. Use tables for comparisons and financial history. Explain technical and accounting terms when first introduced. A reader should be able to skim the overview and watchlist in a few minutes, then inspect the detailed evidence.

Use a stable filename such as 01-nvidia.md; the number is the initial coverage order, not a permanently current rank.

Research instructions

Source hierarchy and reading plan

1. Start with the latest annual filing and quarterly filing: 10-K/10-Q, 20-F, or the relevant home-market equivalent. Read the business description, segment notes, risk factors, cash flow, accounting policies, and commitments.
2. Review earnings releases for the latest four quarters and the latest full year. Use older annual statements to complete three-year comparisons.
3. Read or listen to the latest earnings call, including Q&A. Check the prior call when evaluating whether a narrative or guidance has changed. Record the date and relevant section or timestamp.
4. Read investor presentations and official product announcements. Verify commercially important claims against customer, supplier, or competitor disclosures where possible.
5. Review recent reputable reporting—such as Reuters, AP, or other established business publications—for new developments and informed challenges to management's narrative.
6. Follow material developments through the stated cutoff. Distinguish a signed agreement, an approval, a completed deal, a shipment, and recognized revenue.
7. Record unresolved gaps. Do not claim to have reviewed a paywalled article or inaccessible transcript based only on its headline.

Use primary sources for numbers and product specifications. Company announcements are evidence of company claims, not independent proof of product superiority. Use independent news for context; trace its critical claims to originals when accessible.

Financial and citation rules

• Lead with GAAP or the relevant reported accounting standard. Label adjusted/non-GAAP numbers and explain material exclusions.
• Match periods and definitions. Fiscal years differ from calendar years; year-over-year and sequential growth answer different questions.
• Use restated or recast comparatives when segment definitions or accounting presentations change.
• Define free cash flow. Check whether finance-lease payments, capitalized software, or other deductions affect comparability.
• Distinguish operating earnings from investment gains, tax effects, asset sales, and other non-operating items.
• Separate revenue, bookings, backlog, remaining obligations, capacity, and proposed spending. Do not treat them as interchangeable.
• Avoid double-counting parent companies, share classes, ADRs, or overlapping business categories.
• State the source, timestamp or access date, currency, and share-count treatment of market values. Round values appropriately.
• Show reproducible formulas for growth, margins, trailing totals, valuation ratios, and scenarios.
• Attach a source link to each material numerical table or factual claim. Mark author calculations, management forecasts, third-party estimates, and interpretation.
• End every deep research .md with a visible Further reading and sources section. Keep the inline citations too. Group the annotated links by source type; label any suggested but unread material separately.
• Paraphrase source material; use only brief quotations when the exact wording matters. Do not copy transcripts or large source tables.
• Do not invent consensus estimates, growth forecasts, missing disclosures, or benchmark comparisons.

Tone and presentation

Lead with a useful conclusion and the evidence behind it. Write in plain English, with enough detail for an analyst to challenge the argument. Explain why a number matters rather than merely reciting it.

Avoid promotional language, unexplained acronyms, and automatic buy/sell ratings. Treat uncertainty as part of the analysis. Scenarios illustrate possible outcomes; they are not promises or personalized recommendations.

Visual style for every deep dive

• Open with one editorial image that helps readers understand the business. Use licensed or original imagery; label AI-generated conceptual illustrations and never present them as actual products or facilities.
• Include three to five useful charts: revenue and profit history, the revenue mix, cash conversion, and a company-specific operational or outlook chart. Add more only when they explain a material point.
• Use a consistent warm ivory, graphite, and green palette, generous spacing, direct labels, and restrained decoration. Use amber for management forecasts, with explicit text labels so color is not the only distinction.
• Build charts from verified numerical data. Include units, fiscal periods, dates, accounting definitions, and source notes. Separate reported results, guidance, and author scenarios visually.
• Start bar-chart value axes at zero. Explain any cropped percentage axis. Avoid dual axes and 3D effects; do not imply confidence intervals where only guidance ranges exist.
• Place each chart beside the relevant discussion. Add descriptive alt text, a concise takeaway, and clickable sources; retain data tables or text equivalents for accessibility.
• Save images in the space's assets folder and embed them with a full, stable Stuff URL: ![Description](https://stuff.ac/api/v1/items/IMAGE_ID/content). Full URLs and root-relative URLs both render in Stuff.ac; use full URLs for portable Markdown. These permission-checked URLs have no expiry or embedded access token, and viewers still need access to the image. Preserve the original research date and verify the images in Stuff.ac after saving. Keep Further reading and sources as the final section of every report.

Company-specific research questions

These are questions for future research, not conclusions about current performance.

Quality check before publishing an article

• Reconcile the key figures with original disclosures; check calculations, units, currencies, dates, and denominator definitions.
• Test the strongest positive argument against the strongest negative evidence.
• Confirm that product plans and news are current through the stated cutoff.
• Make tables understandable without requiring readers to open a source.
• Check every source link and distinguish inaccessible evidence from reviewed evidence.
• Ensure the overview, detailed analysis, scenarios, and watchlist tell a consistent story.
• Save the report, read back the stored version, and link it in this README.

When a report is updated, retain its history, move the research cutoff forward, and add a short dated change note. Refresh after earnings or a material event when an update is requested; this space does not establish an automatic research schedule.

Publication log

• October 6, 2026: Completed Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon; added sixteen original illustrations and charts, an interactive five-company explorer, a sixteen-slide HTML presentation, and a shared data/source ledger. Figures use the latest reported periods available at the research cutoff, with fiscal-period and cash-flow differences explicitly labeled.

• October 6, 2026: Added a market-cap comparison to this README, a cover illustration and four charts to the NVIDIA report, and a shared visual style for future reports.

• October 6, 2026: Space and research standard created; dated top-ten list established.

• October 6, 2026: NVIDIA deep dive completed using annual and quarterly filings, earnings materials and Q&A, product and customer announcements, competitor disclosures, and recent reporting.

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