Markets Insight: The long wait for AI returns

It is a spectacular growth that Anthropic's stock market prospectus published at the beginning of the week presents: sales increased fourteen-fold - from 1.2 billion dollars in the first quarter to 16.3 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2026. Operationally, Anthropic is no longer burning billions - but is scratching the break-even point.

The numbers, combined with the growth prospects, seem worthy of a trillion-dollar company. At the beginning of the week, that was enough to dispel doubts about the value of AI investments.

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, sums up the results of his analysis succinctly: “Despite massive investments and the widespread hype surrounding artificial intelligence, the technology has not brought any financial benefit to American companies outside of the tech industry.”

He makes the findings based on a number of criteria. Sales per employee at the big tech companies, the magic seven (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla) have been rising steeply since 2023.

In just under three years, it has grown from an average of $600,000 to $800,000 per employee. The AI ​​promise that the same number of employees can do more seems to be working for the technology companies. The situation is different in the rest of the economy: sales per employee of the remaining 493 US companies in the leading index S&P 500 stagnated at around $500,000 per employee over the same three-year period.

The same picture emerges when looking at the margin: While the Magic Seven's profit margin has doubled from 15 to 30 percent in three years, the average of the 493 US companies remains unchanged at around ten percent over the same period. And the AI ​​hype has not yet been reflected in productivity statistics either, says Slok: “There are still no signs that AI is boosting productivity.”

The Apollo chief economist warns that this could lead to a rethink outside of Silicon Valley. “With no impact on the bottom line, corporate America is retreating and increasingly viewing AI token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost that weighs on margins.” While start-ups financed by venture capitalists are spending ever larger sums on the use of AI, according to Slok, Corporate America is increasingly turning to more economical solutions.

This could have consequences for the AI ​​rally: “As long as agentic AI and token spending are limited to a small part of the economy, the macroeconomic effects of AI will be very limited,” Slok is convinced. Investors should therefore not be blinded by the growth figures of the magic seven, advises Slok. Because: “The bottom line is that developments in the area of ​​AI will be decided in the S&P 493.”