Three years into the AI boom, the S&P 493 has nothing to show for it
The “AI transforms every business” pitch is noise today. The capability is real; the deployment is not. That gap is where builders make money.
Revenue per worker and margins are rising for the Mag 7 and flat for the other 493.
Apollo’s chief economist Torsten Slok pulled the data. Productivity growth shows no AI effect, AI spending sits inside a handful of firms, and mainstream companies now treat token spend as a cost centre. His bottom line is that the AI story gets decided in the S&P 493, and so far there is no payoff outside tech.
My read: the “AI transforms every business” pitch is noise today. The capability is real; the deployment is not. That gap is where builders make money.
Your pick: if you build or sell AI products, pick one measurable workflow in a non-tech business and price against the money it saves. Skip the transformation deck.
12 months: boards demand hard ROI numbers for AI budgets.
24 months: the winners are vertical tools with proven unit economics.
36 months: the payoff finally shows in the data, built on boring workflow wins from this era.
Why I may be wrong: macro data lags adoption by years, so the payoff may be real and just unmeasured.
Where are you seeing actual ROI outside tech?