Evidence since May 2024 shows Apple has indeed continued to use the bulk of its excess cash for large-scale share repurchases, while avoiding major acquisitions and only modestly increasing capital investment.

Key points:

• Massive, continuing buyback authorizations. In May 2024 Apple’s board approved a record $110 billion repurchase authorization, and in May 2025 it added a further $100 billion program, the two largest buyback authorizations in U.S. history and clear signals that buybacks remain central to capital allocation. (macmegasite.com)
• Actual repurchases dominate cash use. Apple repurchased about $70 billion of stock in the first nine months of fiscal 2024 and roughly $104.2 billion for full-year 2024. (sec.gov) In the first half of 2025 alone, Apple bought back another $48.3 billion of stock ($23.3B in Q1, $25.0B in Q2), and data on net equity repurchased show roughly $90–95 billion of buybacks for 2024 and a similar magnitude in 2025. (sec.gov) These amounts are on the same order as Apple’s annual free cash flow (about $109 billion in FY 2024), meaning most free cash is being returned to shareholders rather than redirected into new ventures. (bullfincher.io)
• Capex and other investments are much smaller. Apple’s capital expenditures were about $9.45 billion in FY 2024 and ~$12.7 billion in FY 2025—an increase, but still less than one‑seventh of what the company spends on buybacks in a typical recent year. (financecharts.com) Even significant real-estate purchases (around $500 million in Bay Area properties in one week of June 2025) are small relative to annual repurchase totals. (sfchronicle.com)
• No shift to large transformative acquisitions. Apple’s 2024–2025 deals remain small, such as buying AI-focused startups like DarwinAI, Mayday Labs, the Pixelmator Team, and game studio RAC7; its largest acquisition is still the $3 billion Beats deal from 2014. (en.wikipedia.org) Tim Cook reiterated in July 2025 that while Apple is “very open” to AI-related M&A of any size, the companies acquired so far in 2025 are “small in nature,” underscoring the absence of large-scale takeovers. (cnbc.com)
• Even big new initiatives haven’t eclipsed buybacks. In February 2025 Apple announced a headline-grabbing plan to spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over four years, including a new AI server factory in Texas, doubling its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, and various R&D and supplier commitments. (apple.com) However, this figure bundles operating spending, supplier contracts, content production, and pre-existing investment patterns; it has not coincided with a reduction in the scale of Apple’s repurchase programs. A contemporaneous analysis notes that Apple still leads the S&P 500 in cumulative buybacks (~$709 billion total, ~$90.7 billion in the most recent year) and is criticized for prioritizing shareholder returns over aggressive AI capex, confirming that its capital-return bias remains intact. (marketwatch.com)

Taken together, the post–May 2024 record shows Apple continuing extremely large stock buybacks that absorb most of its excess cash, while capex and acquisitions, though present and growing in AI and manufacturing, remain comparatively modest. That matches Chamath’s prediction that Apple would primarily use its large cash pile to repurchase its own stock rather than to pursue major new investments or acquisitions, at least over the ~18 months since the podcast aired.