AI delivers 'zero financial payoff' to most companies, Apollo economist says

Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok argues that, despite heavy investment and widespread enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, most large U.S. companies have yet to see financial returns from it. He examines the “S&P 493,” the S&P 500 excluding Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. In those companies, profit margins and revenue per worker appear flat, offering no clear evidence that AI has boosted productivity. His conclusion is that outside the technology sector, AI has so far delivered no measurable payoff to corporate America’s bottom line.

Slok questions whether non-tech businesses will simply catch up later. He argues that making intelligence cheaper is not enough to raise sales or margins, because business success depends on more than fast calculations: it requires judgment and attention to accountability, trust, workplace culture, unwritten norms, ethical trade-offs, and fairness. Those factors affect reputational risk and, in turn, revenue and profitability, while AI does not reliably understand them. The assessment aligns with other recent studies finding limited productivity gains from AI so far. The central issue is therefore not just how much companies spend on the technology, but whether they can apply it to decisions and work that produce tangible economic value.