Amazon paid no dividends, that's their big debt financing.
Where did their financing come from then?
They had a cash-cow called AWS to keep the retail business afloat
not right away
Somebody must not be old enough to remember Amazon before AWS. Maybe you also don’t remember that Amazon started selling books before becoming the world’s largest fencing for selling stolen merch. They used to be the butt of many jokes for losing so much money for so many years while they expanded warehouses.