Goldman Says AI's Growth Boost Peaks in 2026; Apollo Sees 'Zero Financial Payoff'

Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius expects the AI boom's boost to U.S. growth to peak in late 2026 or early 2027 — and Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok says the payoff that was supposed to replace it hasn't arrived at all outside tech.

The AI boom has propped up U.S. growth for more than a year. Now two of Wall Street's most-cited economists say the prop is bending.

"Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," Slok wrote in a note Saturday.

Hatzius, in a note to clients Monday, said the growth impulse from AI was set to peak in late 2026 or early 2027 "even before concerns around the sustainability of the AI investment boom intensified in recent weeks."

That's the timeline before any market wobble, not because of one.

How big is the AI boost right now?

AI is one of several reasons Hatzius sees risks to growth tilting downward. His other numbers stack up fast:

• Gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and European and Asian natural gas prices are back near or above their March and April highs on fears of renewed Middle East escalation.
• Long-term interest rates are up about 100 basis points on average across developed-market yield curves since early 2026. Hatzius partly blames large deficits and "AI-linked borrowing" for the rise, and estimates it will subtract a cumulative 0.6% from GDP if it lasts.
• Goldman pegs the AI "wealth effect" — the stock-market channel — at 0.4 percentage points of U.S. consumer spending growth over the past year, or 0.25% of GDP. Hatzius expects that to decline.

The wealth-effect fade would be gradual if stocks track Goldman strategists' "reasonably upbeat" expectations, and sharper if AI-related stocks keep falling.

AI investment itself is still rising rapidly, Hatzius wrote. But he expects its increase as a share of GDP to slow over the next year. That, plus the fading boost from last year's restoration of 100% bonus depreciation under the One Big Beautiful Bill — letting companies write off equipment purchases immediately — will weigh on capital spending growth, especially in the U.S.

The point: the impulse is real, but it's cresting.

Why has the payoff been so concentrated?

Slok's note explains the concentration. Inflation-adjusted revenue per worker and profit margins are rising for the Magnificent 7 — and flat for everyone else in the S&P 500, which he calls the S&P 493.

Productivity shows no AI lift either. Slok cites the San Francisco Fed's utilization-adjusted measure of total factor productivity: nothing moves.

"With no impact on the bottom line, mainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins," Slok wrote.

Venture-backed companies are the exception, spending more and more on tokens. Slok points to Ramp AI Index data and work by Ramp chief economist Ara Kharazian. Mainstream corporate America "does not need the latest model and is unwilling to pay for it."

"As long as agentic AI and token spending are confined to a small part of the economy, the macroeconomic effects of AI will be very limited," Slok wrote.

Where do the two economists split?

Goldman's base case holds that AI investment "will ultimately pay off in terms of higher productivity and economywide profits," Hatzius wrote.

Slok is far less sure. The question, he wrote, is whether mainstream companies can turn "increasingly cheap intelligence" into higher revenue and margins as models get commoditized. "That may be harder than it sounds," he wrote. "AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment."

Hatzius's optimism comes with a catch. One key channel for the productivity payoff, he wrote, is labor-market disruption, "which has negative near-term macroeconomic effects."

Labor markets in developed economies still look solid overall. But Goldman is seeing clearer signs that AI's impact is spreading beyond tech: across U.S. nonmanufacturing industries, the share of firms using AI in regular business functions now has a statistically significant negative correlation with employment growth and a statistically significant positive correlation with unemployment.

The bet Goldman is making, in effect: AI pays off, but the bill lands on workers first.