Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok writes that AI has delivered no financial payoff to corporate America outside tech: revenue per worker and profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 but flat for the S&P 493, and total factor productivity shows no sign of an AI-driven lift. With nothing reaching the bottom line, mainstream companies are starting to treat token spending as a cost center rather than a growth source.

  • Uneven adoption: venture-backed companies keep increasing token spend, while mainstream firms say they do not need the newest model and will not pay for it.
  • Limited macro effect: while agentic AI and token budgets stay confined to a small slice of the economy, the aggregate impact stays small.
  • The judgment argument: Slok calls AI a great calculator, but says business intelligence is mostly judgment, and that models do not grasp accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, which is what shapes reputational risk and, in turn, revenue and margins.

His conclusion is that the AI story will be settled in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7, and that there is no evidence yet of margins or revenue growth improving outside tech.

Related: Apollo Economist Warns AI Agents Could Trigger an Agentic Bank Run, Goldman Sachs Predicts 24x Surge in AI Agent Token Use

No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector