> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://theainewsfiles.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Apollo's chief economist says AI has delivered "zero financial payoff" outside tech - URL: https://theainewsfiles.com/apollo-slok-ai-payoff-outside-tech-sp-493/ - Published: 2026-10-26T11:02:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-26T11:02:49.000Z - Description: Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok says flat margins and revenue per worker outside the Mag 7 show no AI payoff yet. Here is what the note shows and where it is thin. - Author: J E Cowie - Tags: News Torsten Slok, Apollo Global Management's chief economist, has published a note arguing that AI spending has not yet shown up in the results of America's big companies outside the technology sector. Apollo dates the note 24 October 2026, and Bloomberg described it as published on the Saturday. Slok opens it bluntly: "Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech." This is an economist's argument, and the evidence is a handful of charts. The charts and the argument are worth taking one at a time. ## What the note says The note, titled "No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector" and part of Apollo's Daily Spark series, splits the S&P 500 in two. One side is the "Mag 7". The other is what Slok calls the "S&P 493". TechCrunch defines the S&P 493 as the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. Apollo's note itself does not list the seven names. Slok makes three claims, each tied to a chart: - "Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493." - "Profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 but are flat for the S&P 493." - "And there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth." From these he draws a conclusion about corporate behaviour: "With no impact on the bottom line, mainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins." His closing line puts the stakes on the 493: "The bottom line is that the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7, and so far, there is no evidence that revenue growth or margins are improving outside the tech sector." ## The charts, and how far to trust the numbers The note does not publish the underlying values. PPC Land, which went through the charts in detail, read the profit-margin chart as showing the Mag 7 at close to 30% recently and the S&P 493 hovering between 9% and 10% since 2023\. PPC Land says these figures are approximations taken from the plotted lines. Treat them as a reading of a picture, not as Apollo's data. The note says the productivity chart uses the San Francisco Fed's utilisation-adjusted total factor productivity series and US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. PPC Land reads output-per-hour growth at roughly 2% to 2.5% in the latest readings, with total factor productivity around zero. PPC Land also adds that the charts "show correlation in time, not cause", so rising Mag 7 margins could reflect factors other than AI. It adds that flat S&P 493 lines do not prove AI has no effect at company level, because gains in some firms could be offset elsewhere or take longer to show in aggregate figures. ## The Ramp data The last two charts rest on spending data from Ramp, the corporate card and expense company, and they are part of Slok's note. The fourth chart, credited to Ramp's chief economist Ara Kharazian and Apollo's chief economist, shows how concentrated spending is among the top 10% of firms. In model serving and inference, PPC Land reports, that group accounts for 99.5% of spend. The figure for OpenAI and Anthropic combined is 95.6%. The fifth chart, based on the Ramp AI Index, splits businesses by AI spend and whether they are venture-backed. According to PPC Land, 80.4% of the top 1% of AI spenders are VC-backed, against 13.1% of median spenders. Slok reads this as a split: "VC-backed companies are spending more and more on tokens, but mainstream corporate America does not need the latest model and is unwilling to pay for it." He adds, "As long as agentic AI and token spending are confined to a small part of the economy, the macroeconomic effects of AI will be very limited." PPC Land flags limits on this evidence. It says the Ramp figures reflect businesses using Ramp's products rather than the whole economy, and that they are not the same population as the S&P 493\. It also says the note does not state the sample size, the period or how the top 10% is defined, and that the note's claim of a corporate "pulling back" is not backed by a specific data series in the note itself. ## Slok's argument about judgment Slok does not simply say the 493 are late. He asks whether cheaper AI changes anything: "The question looking ahead is whether, even as models become commoditized, mainstream corporate America can turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins. That may be harder than it sounds." His reasoning is qualitative. "AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment," he writes, and he adds that "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." That is a claim about what AI can do, and the charts alone do not test it. The charts record flat lines up to now, and the judgment argument is Slok's explanation of why they might stay flat. ## Other numbers in the debate PPC Land set the note beside other surveys. It cites a KPMG survey of 2,145 senior leaders in which 49% had scaled back, narrowed, delayed or paused AI agent rollouts after costs began to outweigh value, and 7% reported established return on investment. It also cites an August TransUnion study in which 53% of enterprise marketers reported meaningful ROI from AI, with most gains so far coming from time savings rather than revenue. These come from PPC Land's summaries, not from Apollo's note, and PPC Land presents them as pointing in the same direction as Slok's claim. ## Reading the note The headline phrase, "zero financial payoff", is Slok's characterisation. What the charts are described as showing is flat revenue per worker and flat margins for the 493, not a literal zero. TechCrunch's version is that profit margins and revenue per worker "appear to be flat". Apollo's disclaimer on the page says that opinions, estimates and projections "constitute the current judgment of the speaker as of the date indicated" and "do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Apollo". It is a data-backed opinion from a senior economist at a large investor, not a controlled study of AI's effects, and it should be read as one. Its useful contribution is the question it puts to the AI boom: whether the buyers, not just the sellers, see the money. ## Sources Slok, T. (2026) 'No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector', The Daily Spark, Apollo Global Management, 24 October 2026, available at: [https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/no-signs-of-ai-payoff-outside-the-tech-sector](https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/no-signs-of-ai-payoff-outside-the-tech-sector?ref=theainewsfiles.com) (Accessed: 26 October 2026). Ha, A. (2026) 'AI delivers 'zero financial payoff' to most companies, Apollo economist says', TechCrunch, 25 October 2026, available at: [https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/25/ai-delivers-zero-financial-payoff-to-most-companies-according-to-apollo-economist/](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/25/ai-delivers-zero-financial-payoff-to-most-companies-according-to-apollo-economist/?ref=theainewsfiles.com) (Accessed: 26 October 2026). Rijo, L. (2026) 'Apollo finds zero AI payoff outside tech as S&P 493 margins stay near 10%', PPC Land, 25 October 2026, available at: [https://ppc.land/apollo-finds-zero-ai-payoff-outside-tech-as-s-p-493-margins-stay-near-10/](https://ppc.land/apollo-finds-zero-ai-payoff-outside-tech-as-s-p-493-margins-stay-near-10/?ref=theainewsfiles.com) (Accessed: 26 October 2026). Smith, R. (2026) 'Apollo's Slok Says AI Has Delivered Zero Payoff Outside of Tech', Bloomberg, 25 October 2026, available at: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-25/ai-provides-zero-payoff-to-s-p-493-outside-tech-apollo-economist-says](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-25/ai-provides-zero-payoff-to-s-p-493-outside-tech-apollo-economist-says?ref=theainewsfiles.com) (Accessed: 26 October 2026). ## Picture credits - Top picture: The Solow Building at 9 West 57th Street, Apollo Global Management's headquarters. Solow Building (9 West 57th Street, Apollo Global Management HQ), photo by Tony Hisgett, [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=theainewsfiles.com) ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solow%5FBuilding%5F%284674789509%29.jpg?ref=theainewsfiles.com))