Most big companies outside tech see no money gain from AI yet

A top economist at Apollo Global Management says AI has not added to the bottom line of big U.S. companies outside the tech industry. Torsten Slok, Apollo's chief economist, wrote that the technology has delivered "zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech."

What the note found

Slok looked at the S&P 500, a group of 500 large U.S. companies, but removed seven tech giants: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. He calls what is left the S&P 493. Profit margins, meaning how much of each sales dollar a company keeps, look flat. So does revenue per worker. He sees no evidence that AI is improving productivity.

Are these companies simply slow to catch up? Slok sounded doubtful. He said it will be tough to turn "increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins." In his words, "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. Recent studies have also found that AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains.

What is not known

This is one economist's reading of broad numbers. The material does not say how any single company is doing, or whether gains could show up later. It also does not cover small businesses. Apollo used to own TechCrunch, which reported the note.