Apollo Global Management’s chief economist, Torsten Slok, says artificial intelligence has delivered “zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech,” according to a note Apollo published on October 24, 2026 and widely reported on October 25. Slok points to revenue per worker and profit margins that are rising at seven tech giants but flat across the rest of the S&P 500, and he sees no sign yet that AI is lifting productivity growth.
What Slok’s note says
The note, titled “No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector,” splits the S&P 500 in two. One group is the seven companies Apollo calls the “Mag 7”: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, as TechCrunch and SiliconANGLE list them. The other is the “S&P 493,” the remaining companies in the index.
Apollo’s page says revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but flat for the S&P 493, and that profit margins follow the same pattern. It also sees no sign of AI boosting productivity growth, using the San Francisco Fed’s utilization-adjusted total factor productivity series.
SiliconANGLE, which read the charts, reports that revenue per employee at the tech firms climbed from about $550,000 in 2022 to almost $800,000 this year, while it has been flat at roughly $550,000 for the S&P 493 since 2019. It adds that margins have been rising at the tech group since the third quarter of 2023 and are roughly flat for everyone else. The underlying chart values are not published in Apollo’s text, so those dollar figures are SiliconANGLE’s reading, not Apollo’s own numbers.
Slok’s bottom line, in his words: “the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7.”
Tokens as a cost, not a growth engine
A second strand of the note concerns spending. Apollo says mainstream companies are treating spending on AI tokens, the usage-based units model providers charge for, as a cost that weighs on margins rather than a source of growth. Venture-backed companies are spending heavily on tokens, it says, but established firms are unwilling to pay for the latest models.
Tom’s Hardware headlined its report with the warning that rising token costs threaten to squeeze corporate profit margins; we confirmed only that headline from the page and attribute nothing further to it.
Slok also argues that as long as agentic AI and token spending stay confined to a small part of the economy, the macroeconomic effects will be limited.
Why Slok is skeptical of an easy fix
Slok questions whether companies can turn cheaper AI into higher revenue and margins. TechCrunch quotes him saying that “AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment,” and that AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness.
How this compares with other measures
Adoption itself is still partial. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey found that between 17% and 20% of businesses used AI from December 2025 to May 2026, with 37% of firms with 250 or more employees and 32% of those with 100 to 249 employees reporting use. Information led sectors at 39.7% as of May 3, 2026, against about 14% in retail.
Company-level studies point the same way as Slok on returns. A 2025 report from MIT’s Project NANDA, “The GenAI Divide,” concluded that 95% of organizations saw no business return from generative AI despite $30 billion to $40 billion in enterprise spending. The report, as summarized by Virtualization & Cloud Review, rests on a modest sample of 52 interviews and 153 survey responses, and we have not read the full report.
Our explainer on what economists say about AI and productivity covers large gains for some workers alongside far more cautious macro estimates.
What to watch next
- Whether S&P 493 revenue per worker and margins move in upcoming quarterly results.
- Updates to the San Francisco Fed productivity series Apollo cites.
- Further Census Bureau readings of AI adoption among smaller and mid-sized firms.
- Whether more mainstream companies cap or renegotiate token spending.
Key takeaways
- Apollo’s Torsten Slok says AI has delivered “zero financial payoff” to corporate America outside tech.
- Revenue per worker and margins are rising for seven tech giants and flat for the other 493 S&P 500 companies, per Apollo.
- Slok sees no sign of an AI-driven lift to productivity growth and calls token spending a cost for mainstream firms.
- Census data show AI use at 17% to 20% of U.S. businesses, much higher at large firms.
- The note is one economist’s view of aggregate data, and other studies measure returns differently.
Frequently asked questions
What is the S&P 493?
It is the S&P 500 excluding Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
Who is Torsten Slok?
Slok is a partner and the chief economist at Apollo, the asset manager.
Does the note prove AI does not work for business?
No. It looks at aggregate revenue, margin and productivity data, which can lag real changes. It says the evidence of a payoff has not appeared yet outside tech.
