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Apollo economist says AI has delivered zero payoff to companies outside tech
Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok published a note saying AI has not improved the bottom line of any large non-tech corporation. Looking at the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, he found flat profit margins and flat revenue per worker.
Key points
- Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok says AI has delivered zero financial payoff outside tech.
- He analyzed the S&P 500 minus seven tech giants and found flat margins and revenue per worker.
- Slok argues business value depends on judgment, trust and accountability that AI lacks.
What happened: Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, published a note arguing that AI has not improved the bottom line of any large corporation outside the tech sector, TechCrunch reported on October 25. "Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," Slok wrote.
The details: Slok looked at what he calls the "S&P 493," the S&P 500 without Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. In that group, profit margins and revenue per worker appear flat, and he found no evidence that AI is raising productivity. Asked whether non-tech firms are simply lagging behind the tech giants, Slok was skeptical, saying it will be tough for corporate America to "turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins."
Background: Slok argued that "AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment." He added that AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, which he said shape reputational risk and drive revenue and margins. TechCrunch noted that recent studies have also found AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains.
What to watch: The note does not say which AI deployments were examined at company level, and Apollo has not disclosed further data behind the analysis. For buyers, the open question is whether gains appear in company results over the coming quarters or remain confined to the largest technology firms.
Our take
Teams buying AI tools should set measurable margin or productivity targets up front, since broad market data does not yet show a payoff.