Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok said on October 24 that artificial intelligence investment is paying off for the largest US technology companies while producing no measurable financial gain for the rest of corporate America. Revenue per worker and profit margins are climbing at the Magnificent Seven technology stocks but holding flat across the other 493 companies in the S&P 500, according to his analysis. Slok concluded that despite heavy spending and widespread enthusiasm for AI, the technology has delivered no financial return to businesses outside the tech sector.
The analysis found no clear evidence that AI is lifting productivity growth. Slok said the question of whether the AI story holds up will be settled by the S&P 493 rather than the Magnificent Seven, and that so far revenue growth and margins outside tech show no improvement. He also argued that AI cannot grasp accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, which he said shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins.
Cost pressure is building as companies run AI models at scale. Many providers charge by token usage, so bills rise as employees file more requests or AI agents process data and take on more complex tasks. Slok said mainstream companies are starting to treat token spending as a cost center rather than a source of growth, and that venture capital-backed businesses spend more on tokens while established firms have less reason to pay for the newest models when cheaper options can do the job.
That tension creates a problem for AI providers counting on adoption to produce lasting revenue. Selling more computing power and model access lifts suppliers' sales, but customers need matching gains in productivity, revenue or operating costs to keep spending at the same pace. If AI expenses climb without measurable business improvement, the added spending could weigh on margins. The analysis also notes that AI adoption remains concentrated among a relatively small group of companies, limiting the technology's effect on the wider economy unless usage spreads across more industries and produces measurable results.
Similar pressure is showing up in India's financial technology sector. A PwC India survey reported by Business Standard on September 11 found that 84% of surveyed fintech respondents had not yet seen measurable financial results from their AI investments. The survey also found that 48% of respondents named proprietary intelligence a leading strategic priority, while 30% expected customer experience to drive AI agent adoption over the next three to five years, followed by cost reduction and productivity gains at 22%. Customer trust and adoption was the biggest barrier to scaling agentic payments for 41% of respondents, and 33% pointed to fraud, security and risk management.
Vendors and buyers are both responding to the cost and risk questions. Nvidia has introduced its Open Agent Safety Platform, a hardware-and-software security stack meant to help businesses control AI agents and restrict harmful actions. Rising token consumption has led Microsoft, Meta and Amazon to curb AI usage as employees adopt the tools and agentic workloads increase bills. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called AI token costs a huge issue for customers seeking better value, and Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have committed enormous sums to data centers, chips and the power needed to run AI workloads.
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