Big Tech is cashing in on AI while the rest of corporate America sees no financial returns

Artificial intelligence has helped fuel a boom in technology spending, but the financial benefits remain difficult to spot across much of corporate America. Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok reported on October 24 that revenue per worker and profit margins were rising for the Magnificent Seven technology stocks while remaining flat across the other 493 companies in the S&P 500.

Slok's analysis found no clear evidence that AI is boosting productivity growth despite heavy investment in the technology. 'Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech,' Slok wrote.

Token Costs Rising

Running AI models at scale can quickly drive up costs since many providers charge by token usage, so bills climb as employees make more requests or AI agents process increasingly complex tasks. Slok said mainstream companies were beginning to view token spending as a cost center rather than a source of growth.

Venture capital-backed businesses are spending more on tokens, while established companies have less incentive to pay for the newest models if cheaper alternatives can do the job. This creates a problem for AI providers hoping to turn growing adoption into a lasting revenue stream.

Limited Adoption

Slok's analysis points to a broader limitation: AI adoption remains concentrated among a relatively small group of companies. Unless usage spreads across more industries and produces measurable results, the technology's effect on the wider economy could remain limited.

The same tension is emerging in India's financial technology sector. A PwC India survey found that 84% of surveyed fintech respondents had yet to see measurable financial results from their AI investments, even though 48% identified proprietary intelligence as a leading strategic priority.

Trust and Security Concerns

Trust remains a significant hurdle for businesses looking to deploy AI agents in financial services. According to the PwC India survey, 41% of respondents identified customer trust and adoption as the biggest barriers to scaling agentic payments, while 33% pointed to fraud, security and risk management as major concerns.

AI agents could expand the technology's role in business by handling multistep tasks rather than simply responding to prompts, although their ability to access tools, process information and act across company systems also brings additional usage costs and security concerns.

Nvidia has been developing tools to address some of those risks, introducing its Open Agent Safety Platform, a hardware-and-software security stack designed to help businesses control AI agents and restrict potentially harmful actions. Rising token consumption has also prompted companies including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon to rein in AI usage as employees adopt the tools and agentic workloads drive up bills.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged the problem, describing AI token costs as a 'huge issue' for customers seeking better value from their spending. The infrastructure behind the AI boom carries its own price tag with Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft having committed enormous sums to data centers, chips and the power needed to run AI workloads.