STATEMENT / ANALYSIS: artificial intelligence has not yet delivered a measurable financial payoff to large American companies outside the technology sector. That is the conclusion of Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, in a note published on October 24, 2026, in the Daily Spark, titled “No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector”.
What Slok compared
Slok split the S&P 500 into two groups: the “Mag 7” — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — and the other 493 companies, which he calls the “S&P 493”. According to the note, revenue per worker is rising for the first group and flat for the second, and profit margins follow the same pattern, with no sign that AI is lifting productivity growth outside tech.
The numbers in the note
According to the charts reproduced in coverage of the note, revenue per employee at the Mag 7 rose from about $550,000 in 2022 to nearly $800,000 in 2026, while the S&P 493 stayed near $550,000 over seven years. Margins sit near 30% for the Mag 7, versus about 10% outside it. Spending is also concentrated: the top 10% of firms account for 99.5% of model-inference spending, according to the note.
“Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech,” Slok wrote. He added that “the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7”.
Why it matters now
According to the note, mainstream corporate America has begun pulling back and viewing token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center weighing on margins. The warning was flagged by Bloomberg on October 25, in the middle of earnings season, when investors are closely watching how much companies spend on AI and what they get in return.
As context, PYMNTS notes that Meta spent $34.9 billion on capital expenditures in the third quarter and reported negative free cash flow of $2.1 billion, while promising to be even more aggressive on AI spending — a move that sent its shares down, according to the report.
What the note does not prove
The analysis must be separated from the verdict: this is one economist's reading of aggregate data, not a company-by-company audit. Slok argues that AI may be a “great calculator”, but business depends on judgment, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs and fairness — factors he says AI does not understand. TechCrunch notes that recent studies have also found no significant productivity gains from AI.
In short: the confirmed fact is the publication of the note and its figures; the thesis that the payoff will not come, or will take a long time, is Slok's interpretation — and it may be challenged by other data as adoption matures.
Image credit: facade of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), photograph by Ryan Schwark, via Wikimedia Commons, under the CC0 public domain dedication. The image illustrates the stock market and does not reproduce the charts in Apollo's note.
Sources: TechCrunch — AI with no financial payoff outside tech; PYMNTS — Apollo on AI's zero payoff outside tech
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on cross-checking public posts on X and the internet sources listed below. We recommend consulting the original sources to confirm the details.
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