Every big commerce name put up growth in the first half of 2026. Rick's question is what it cost them.

Shopify had its best quarter in years and passed $100 billion in GMV, though loan losses at Shopify Capital crept up over the same stretch. Amazon beat estimates and then turned around and spent $44.2 billion in three months on AI infrastructure. UPS is doing something stranger. It's shrinking revenue on purpose, walking away from Amazon volume and booking about $1.2 billion in separation costs to chase higher-margin work. Walmart's real growth engine now looks like advertising. FedEx spun off its freight business and is trying to pull a billion dollars of cost out of the network. And PayPal keeps moving more money while the profitable part of the business sits nearly flat.

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None of that shows up in a headline growth number. Rick's case is that the cash flow does, and that it separates the companies actually getting healthier from the ones renting the look of it.

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