Skip to content
Neural Daily

BusinessNews

Apollo: no sign of AI payoff outside the tech sector

🇭🇺 Olvasd el magyarul →

Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok says AI has delivered zero financial payoff to US companies outside tech so far. Revenue per worker is rising at the Mag 7 but flat across the rest of the S&P 500.

By: Mikola Máté Patrik · · 3 min read

Apollo chart: inflation-adjusted revenue per employee rising for the Magnificent 7 but flat for the S&P 493, 2019 to 2026
Image: Apollo · Press kit · Official chart from Apollo's Daily Spark note of October 24, 2026 · Source

What the note says

In his October 24 Daily Spark note, Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, writes that despite massive investment and hype, AI has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech (Apollo). He backs the claim with five charts based on data from Bloomberg, Macrobond, the San Francisco Fed and Ramp.

  • Inflation-adjusted revenue per worker is rising steeply at the Magnificent 7 but is essentially flat for the other 493 S&P 500 companies.
  • Profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 and flat for the S&P 493.
  • There is still no sign of an AI effect in total factor productivity (TFP).
  • Ramp corporate spending data show AI spend is highly concentrated: the top 10% of firms account for 99.5% of model serving and inference spend and 95.6% of OpenAI and Anthropic spend.
Apollo table showing AI spending concentrated in the top 10% of firms, including 99.5% of model serving and inference spend
Apollo · Press kit · Official chart from Apollo's Daily Spark note of October 24, 2026, based on Ramp data · Source

Source: Apollo (based on Ramp data). Spend categories split between the top 10% and bottom 90% of firms.

What follows

Slok argues that with no impact on the bottom line, mainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending as a cost center that weighs on margins rather than a source of growth. VC-backed companies keep spending more on tokens, but mainstream firms do not need the latest model and are unwilling to pay for it. As long as agentic AI and token spending stay confined to a small part of the economy, the macro effects will be very limited.

The open question, he says, is whether mainstream companies can turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue and margins. He thinks that may be harder than it sounds: much of business is judgment, which depends on context, and AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture or unwritten rules. His bottom line: the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7.

Why it matters

This is the view of an investment firm's economist based on aggregate data, so it does not rule out company-level wins. It is still a useful check for any AI project: a rollout is worth it if it measurably improves revenue or margin, not just the token bill. Tie each AI initiative to a business metric up front and review it every quarter.

    Produced with the help of AI, reviewed by an editor. How we make our articles

    Reviewed and edited by the Neural Daily desk. About

    Related articles