Apollo's Torsten Slok Says AI Boom's Profits Are Funded by Investors, Not Customers

Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok argues the AI value chain is inverted: silicon and equipment suppliers run a 41% operating margin while the models-and-applications layer runs -59%, per Fortune. Slok warns that 'AI boom's profits are currently being funded by investors rather than earned from customers,' and that if capital raises slow, the whole structure — Nvidia, AMD, Micron on top; OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft downstream — becomes unsustainable.