Apollo Economist: AI Delivers Zero Financial Payoff to Most Firms

Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok says artificial intelligence has delivered no measurable financial payoff to most large non-tech companies, despite billions of dollars invested across corporate America. In a recent note, Slok examined the S&P 493, a group comprising the S&P 500 excluding major technology firms such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. He found that profit margins and revenue per worker among these companies have remained broadly flat, offering little evidence that AI is improving productivity. The analysis highlights a growing disconnect between the scale of AI adoption and its business impact. While technology companies and AI infrastructure providers have benefited from rising demand, Slok argues that most non-tech corporations have yet to convert AI spending into stronger earnings or sustainable growth. He suggests that simply waiting for latecomers to catch up with the tech giants is unlikely to solve the problem. Slok contends that AI’s core capability, providing increasingly cheap computational intelligence, does not directly translate into higher revenue or profitability for most businesses. In his view, corporate performance depends less on raw calculation and more on judgment, accountability, trust, organizational culture, informal rules and ethical decision-making. These factors shape reputational risk and ultimately drive business results in ways that AI systems cannot replicate on their own. The commentary aligns with recent research indicating that AI has so far produced limited productivity gains for many organizations. Companies continue to experiment with AI across operations, customer service and internal workflows, but the results have not yet appeared in financial metrics for a broad range of industries. The findings add to a broader debate over whether AI adoption is proceeding faster than its economic payoff.