AitopkitAI has delivered "zero financial payoff" to corporate America outside of tech — that is the blunt verdict from Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok, in a note published October 24, 2026 and reported by TechCrunch and Bloomberg on October 25. Strip the seven tech giants out of the S&P 500, Slok argues, and there is no measurable sign that AI has lifted earnings, revenue or productivity at all.
Slok's frame is the "S&P 493" — the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. For the Magnificent 7, revenue per worker has climbed from roughly $550,000 in 2022 to nearly $800,000, and margins approach 30%. For the other 493, revenue per worker has sat near $550,000 for years and margins hover near 10%, with no visible lift in productivity growth. "The bottom line is that the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7," Slok wrote.
His explanation goes beyond "it is still early." Slok argues mainstream companies are starting to treat token spending as a cost center that weighs on margins rather than a source of growth — and that business intelligence is mostly judgment: "AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, all of which shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins." Spending is also concentrated: the note points to 99.5% of model-inference spending coming from the top 10% of firms.
The timing matters. The note landed as earnings season opened and just after Meta reported $34.9 billion in third-quarter capital spending alongside negative $2.1 billion free cash flow — and said it plans to spend even more aggressively on AI. Slok is not claiming AI will never pay off outside tech; his claim is narrower and harder to dismiss — that so far, the money is flowing to the companies selling AI, not the ones buying it. Whether the S&P 493 closes that gap is now the question the whole AI investment cycle has to answer.