Apollo's Slok: AI Delivers Zero Payoff for 493 Firms — SkimNews
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- Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management — the private equity firm that used to own TechCrunch — published a note finding AI has delivered "zero financial payoff" to big corporations outside the tech industry, with no benefit yet visible in the bottom line.
- S&P 493 is the index Slok built for the analysis: the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, where profit margins and revenue per worker appear flat with no evidence that AI is improving productivity.
- Slok said it will be tough for corporate America to turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins, writing that "AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment."
- Slok added that AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness — factors he ties to reputational risk and ultimately to revenue growth and profit margins.
- Recent studies have likewise found that AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains, corroborating Slok's read on the non-tech corporate bottom line.
Why it matters: Slok's own benchmark is the number to watch: of the 500 S&P names, seven tech firms are removed, leaving 493 with flat margins and flat revenue per worker. He puts the constraint in judgment — accountability, trust, culture, reputational risk — rather than compute, so cheaper AI does not by itself lift corporate profit.
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