Despite investments in artificial intelligence, the financial gains promised by the technology still do not appear in the aggregate indicators for most of the American corporate market. That is the assessment of Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, presented in an analysis published on Saturday (24).
Slok compared the performance of the seven tech giants, known as Magnificent Seven, with the other 493 companies in the S&P 500 index. While Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla record growth in revenue per employee and profit margins, the same indicators remain relatively stagnant in the remaining group, called the S&P 493.
The difference is particularly visible in profitability. In the charts presented by the economist, the profit margins of the seven giants approach 30%, while the other companies remain close to 10%. Revenue per employee, adjusted for inflation, also shows a much steeper growth trajectory among the largest technology companies.
The analysis includes productivity indicators for the American economy, such as output per hour worked and total factor productivity. For Slok, these data still do not reveal a widespread acceleration that can be attributed to AI adoption.
The economist argues that traditional companies are beginning to view spending on tokens, units used to calculate usage of AI models, more as operating expenses than as investments capable of expanding revenue and profits. He also questions whether reducing the cost of these models will be enough to produce consistent financial gains.
The comparison, however, has important limitations. The charts present aggregate trends and do not establish a causal relationship between AI adoption and companies' financial performance. Nor do they allow ruling out individual benefits, such as cost reductions or efficiency gains at specific companies.
For Slok, the decisive question will be whether companies outside the group of seven giants can turn increasingly cheaper access to artificial intelligence into effective growth in revenue and profit margins.
