Retirement funds or not, big tech companies have diversified to the point that investors cannot assess their risks (except for Apple).

There's ordinary non-market factors (esp. electric subsidies and their secondary markets), mark-to-market income on cross-equity investments, debt load and contracts off the books, etc.

The cross-investment is usually somewhat stabilizing, since it e.g., aligns nvidia with its customers' success; that's how keiretsu works.

However, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are at risk of losing a large proportion of their cloud profit-centers, and the threat to Google's ad franchise is already biting deep. Each company's equity would drain if they had no compelling path to take part of the AI proceeds. So they are compelled by both market and capital competition.

As in politics, we used to be able to assume people in power were operating as expected to gain profits or maintain political power in the relatively near term. However, as the advantages of disinformation and dark money (for politics) and the prospects of economy-scale disruption (for AI) both give significant advantages to aggressive and strategic behaviors in the relatively near term, it basically creates moral hazards that are unavoidable, and leader cohorts respond by ousting anyone with doubts. So for voters or investors, the "representative" proxy of leadership character is less useful, and everyone has to fall back to watching the weather and assuming the worst about leadership.

Apple has long decided: (a) equity buy-backs, not peripheral ventures; (b) AI as consumer, local and otherwise, with privacy focus (whatever that can be). However, Apple's also in a tough position: outside of AI, nothing really drives new purchases because even old hardware is plenty for most customers, and memory prices are biting into margins. So Apple is an understandable bet, but not necessarily a great one.

Where's the money to go, in a world where everyone depends not on the red wheel barrow for food but on 8% annually to beat inflation?