Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Sløk says AI has yet to deliver clear financial gains for large U.S. companies outside the technology giants: the Magnificent Seven’s revenue per employee and profit margins are rising, while those measures for the other 493 S&P 500 companies have largely stagnated. According to ChainCatcher, Apollo also noted that U.S. total factor productivity data show no clear signs of an AI-driven boost.

Apollo cited data from corporate payments platform Ramp showing that the top 10% of spenders among its customers account for 99.5% of model-hosting and inference costs. About 80% of companies in the top 1% of AI spending have venture capital backing, compared with 13% of companies at the median spending level, indicating that AI computing costs are concentrated among a small group of firms, many backed by venture capital.

Apollo previously reported that during the second-quarter 2026 earnings season, 69% of S&P 500 companies had disclosed using AI, but only 2% had published metrics to track its results on an ongoing basis. A separate NBER study updated this October surveyed nearly 9,000 business executives across seven countries. Respondents estimated that AI had raised annual labor productivity growth at their companies by about 0.2 percentage points over the past three years.