Apollo's Slok says AI pays off only for Mag 7, not S&P 493

Artificial intelligence has delivered 'zero financial payoff' to corporate America outside the technology sector. That is the finding of Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, in a Daily Spark note published October 24 and reported by TechCrunch the following day.

Slok split the S&P 500 into the seven-company Mag 7 group (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) and the remaining S&P 493. 'Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493,' he wrote. Profit margins tell the same story.

The build underneath that gap is unusually top-heavy. Slok's data show 'the top 10% of firms account for 99.5% of spending on model serving and inference, 99% of neocloud spending and more than 95% of spending tied to OpenAI and Anthropic.' Apollo's note adds: 'There are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth.'

'The AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7,' Slok wrote. He is skeptical that non-tech firms can 'turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins,' arguing that 'AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness.'

The piece is one economist's reading of aggregate data, not a company-by-company audit. Bloomberg ran its own version the same day. Two of the researchers we follow were circulating it on Sunday.