Apollo's chief economist, Torsten Slok, argued in a note published on Saturday 24 October 2026 that AI has so far paid off financially only for the largest technology companies. Outside them, he found no sign of better revenue or profit margins.
“The bottom line is that the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Magnificent Seven, and so far there is no evidence that revenue growth or margins are improving outside of the tech sector.”
Torsten Slok, Apollo chief economist, in the Apollo note, as quoted by SiliconANGLE · siliconangle.com ↗
His yardstick is the "S&P 493", meaning the S&P 500 without Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. Revenue per employee at those seven has climbed from roughly $550,000 in 2022 to nearly $800,000 this year, while the same measure for the other 493 has stayed near $550,000 since 2019. Margins at the seven have been rising since the third quarter of 2023 and are about flat everywhere else. He also sees no evidence of faster productivity growth.
Screenshot of an Apollo chart from the note, used as SiliconANGLE's lead image
Image: SiliconANGLE
Slok's explanation is that mainstream companies are cooling on token spending, which they now treat as a cost that squeezes margins and not as a route to growth. Venture-backed startups are spending more, but established firms are not. He adds that AI lacks judgment tied to accountability, ethics, fairness and trust, which limits what it can do for revenue. While agentic AI and token use stay confined to a small slice of the economy, he expects the macroeconomic effect to remain limited. Tom's Hardware notes that Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have moved to curb internal AI use as token bills rise, and that Sam Altman has called token costs a "huge issue" for customers.
The note lands as investors worry about the other side of the ledger. Bloomberg reports Meta raised its AI capex plans last week, its shares fell and its credit risk gauge reached a record, while CoreWeave's comments and shaky data-centre listings from Firmus and Nscale fed concerns about debt. It also cites a Gartner estimate that more than $3.5tn of AI infrastructure spending could be impaired by 2030. With earnings season under way, returns on AI spending are what investors are watching.