Apollo says AI yields no broader corporate financial gains beyond tech

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AI's gains limited to tech

Highlights

Apollo Global Management analysis finds that AI-driven financial gains remain concentrated among the Magnificent Seven, with broader corporate America seeing negligible benefit.
Since 2022, tech companies' revenue per employee rose from about $550 to nearly $800, while the rest of the S&P 500 has stagnated near $550 over seven years.
Profit margins for tech companies have risen sharply since 2022, but margins for other sectors remain stagnant near 10%, casting doubt on wider AI-driven economic gains.

Apollo analysis highlights uneven AI returns

As reported by Business Insider, citing Apollo Global Management, an economic analysis published on Saturday finds that the financial gains from artificial intelligence are largely accruing to the so-called Magnificent Seven, including companies such as Nvidia and Meta, while other industries see little measurable benefit.

Torsten Slok, a partner and chief economist at Apollo, says mainstream corporate America is pulling back and increasingly treating AI-related spending as a cost center that pressures margins rather than a driver of growth. He says the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech.

In a series of charts, Slok tracks three metrics that have surged for tech companies but not for other businesses, revenue per worker, profit margins and productivity growth. Since 2022, revenue per employee at tech companies has climbed from about $550 to nearly $800, while the same measure for the rest of the S&P 500 has remained near $550 and has shown little change over the past seven years.

Implications for the broader U.S. economy

Profit margins also have risen sharply for tech companies since 2022, but they have stagnated at roughly 10% for the rest of corporate America, according to the analysis. Across the wider economy, Apollo says AI still is not producing the kind of dramatic productivity gains that many supporters of the technology have forecast.

The findings cast doubt on whether heavy investment in AI tools and companies will translate into broader economic gains in the near term. Slok says the key question is whether increasingly cheap intelligence, even as AI models become commoditized, can lift revenue growth and profit margins for mainstream corporate America, adding that doing so may be harder than it sounds.

In our earlier article on a KPMG survey of U.S. CEOs, we noted that many large companies are seeing early efficiency or growth gains from AI agents, but only a small share consider the technology transformational so far. The survey also highlighted continued investment in AI infrastructure alongside hiring and retraining plans, suggesting adoption is expanding even as the operational payoff remains uneven.

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