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It has cost tens of billions of dollars in the last decade to build some of the most dazzling consumer-technology franchises. While the merits of the endeavor can be debated, the spending has been very good for investors in the most successful large-cap technology stocks.

Can it last?

Since the Great Recession, amid ultralow borrowing rates, Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), and Tesla (TSLA) have plowed $93 billion into property and equipment, or, in the case of Netflix, acquiring video content for its service. They have amassed $44 billion of long-term debt, though the sum is even higher, $54 billion, if one counts long-term obligations that Netflix has racked up to arrange for future content.

It’s done wonders for the trio’s shares. Amazon stock has risen 2,524% since July of 2008, and Netflix an even more staggering 9,226%. Those figures are multiples of the S&P 500’s 122% increase, but also vastly better than Alphabet’s (GOOGL) 397% gain in that time, and Apple’s (AAPL) 711% rise. Tesla went public in June 2010, and its price appreciation since then is 1,533%—again, much higher than Alphabet and Apple. All three have also beaten Facebook’s (FB) price rise since its initial public offering in May 2012.

But as the Federal Reserve raises rates, will these kings of debt outperform their peers in the decade to come? As my colleague Randall Forsyth writes in this week’s Up and Down Wall Street, borrowing is set to become less salubrious.

Everyone has drunk from the punch bowl, but none as deeply as these three. Alphabet and Facebook have largely funded their operations by their own means, amassing $138 billion in net cash. Apple has used debt, but not to fund the iPhone; the company was debt-free until 2013, when it began funneling vast borrowings into the world’s largest stock buyback and dividend program.

Of the three, Amazon has the best hand headed into tighter capital markets. Although it has net debt of roughly $10 billion, it has made money for years despite prodigious spending. Total cash generated from 2008 through the first quarter of this year, after subtracting $44 billion in spending on property, plant and equipment, was almost $35 billion. Amazon has shown it knows how to spend a lot to make a lot.

Netflix and Tesla, on the other hand, are the most infamous tech cash-burn stories, with Netflix consuming almost $4 billion in the past 10 years, and Tesla running through over $10 billion.

The constant knock against Netflix is that its total of $18 billion in content obligations, including $10.3 billion off of its balance sheet, is money owed years into the future on which it cannot assure investors it can make a profit. Netflix lost $1.8 billion on its service last year.

Tesla, which has never turned a profit in those 10 years, has $1.49 billion in convertible notes coming due next year. If its stock price rises from Friday’s close of $313.58 to $360, investors will simply receive Tesla shares; if it doesn’t cross that threshold, though, Tesla will end up having to fork over the cash to redeem the notes.

With more than $10 billion in debt against less than $3 billion of cash, and still burning through cash at a rate of about $1 billion per quarter, there’s skepticism among those who follow the company that Tesla can meet that obligation.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said repeatedly this year that his company has no imminent need to raise funds. He’s pledged that operations will generate positive cash flow starting this quarter. A lot of that hinges on how quickly the company ramps up profit for its Model 3 sedan, which has been a saga of manufacturing hiccups.

Barron’s reached out to all three companies to discuss their capital structure and financing. Amazon didn’t reply to our request to speak with Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky. Tesla’s CFO, Deepak Ahuja, was unavailable for comment.

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Netflix’s CFO, David Wells, was also unavailable, though a company spokesperson responded to our questions in an email. Asked whether rising rates pose a risk to the attractiveness of debt, Netflix replied, “Of course, yes, but rates would have to be significantly higher than they are today.” And when could Netflix’s content needs be funded by the company’s own proceeds? “We haven’t been specific on timing, but have said we expect to be free-cash-flow negative for several more years.” What about the $10.3 billion in long-term content obligations? It is “part of ensuring multiyear availability of content for our subscribers (like subsequent seasons of popular shows and future movie output),” and, as such, is “a necessary part of maintaining part of our content offering.”

The challenges facing Netflix and Tesla haven’t mattered much as long as the punch bowl was at hand. The cooling of credit markets may not imperil their business, but it could temper enthusiasm for their stocks.

A possible byproduct of the cooling of borrowing could be investors’ return to smaller names in tech that have clean balance sheets and are developing fundamental technologies. They include companies such as fiber-optic component makers Lumentum Holdings (LITE) and Finisar (FNSR); display-technology maker Universal Display (OLED); wireless-chip maker Qorvo (QRVO); design-software maker Synopsys (SNPS); and tiny Oslo-listed Thin Film Electronics (THIN.Norway).

Those companies have never captured investors’ imagination the way the high-spending threesome have, in part because none has shown the bravado to tap borrowing to change the face of culture and society.

A lingering question is whether the spending by Netflix, Amazon, and Tesla was worth it. For consumers who love what the companies produce, the answer must be a resounding yes. Even to less-partial observers, the companies have changed whole industries, mostly for the better.

Anyway, the counterfactual—what if they hadn’t spent so much?—is difficult to answer because it’s hard to know where else exactly that $93 billion would have gone.

Write to Tiernan Ray at tiernan.ray@barrons.com