New Delhi, May 14 -- A chart is haunting Silicon Valley. The profits of big cloud-computing firms (Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle) are rising inexorably. Yet the amount of cashflow they generate after capital spending is falling. Sketched together, these soaring profits and diving free cashflows, which until recently rose in unison, resemble the gasps of the world's investors.

In short order America's biggest companies have gone from printing money to burning it. Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are all expected by analysts to announce negative cashflows in at least one quarter this year. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, will just about keep its head above water. Oracle, the weakest of the bunch, is already drowning.

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