AI's economic boost peaks in 2026, Goldman says, as payoff stays zero outside tech

AI investment has delivered "zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok wrote Saturday — while Goldman Sachs says the technology's boost to U.S. growth will peak in late 2026 or early 2027.

The two notes landed within days of each other. Goldman's chief economist Jan Hatzius told clients Monday that the growth impulse from the AI boom was set to crest "even before concerns around the sustainability of the AI investment boom intensified in recent weeks."

For more than a year, the AI boom has been holding up U.S. growth. Now both economists expect that support to thin, and the payoff meant to replace it hasn't arrived. That's the macro story; the labor-market signals underneath it matter more for individual workers.

How big is the AI lift right now?

Goldman puts numbers on the channels. The AI "wealth effect" (higher share prices feeding consumer spending) added 0.4 percentage points to U.S. consumer spending growth over the past year, equal to about 0.25% of GDP. Hatzius expects that contribution to shrink over the next year — gradually if stocks track Goldman strategists' "reasonably upbeat" expectations, more sharply if AI-related stocks keep falling.

Long-term interest rates have also risen roughly 100 basis points on average across developed-market yield curves since early 2026. Hatzius partly blames large deficits and "AI-linked borrowing," and estimates the higher rates will subtract a cumulative 0.6% from GDP if they persist.

Takeaway: the AI boom is still adding to growth, but through channels — markets and borrowing costs — that can reverse fast.

Why has the payoff stayed inside Big Tech?

Slok's answer is 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 — the group he calls the "S&P 493." Productivity data shows no AI lift either, he wrote, citing the San Francisco Fed's utilization-adjusted measure of total factor productivity (a gauge of output per unit of combined labor and capital).

"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. They're spending more and more on tokens (usage-based payments to AI models), per the Ramp AI Index 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.

Takeaway: outside tech and startups, AI budgets are turning from growth bets into costs to cut.

What does this mean for jobs?

Hatzius sees AI investment "ultimately" paying off through higher productivity and economywide profits. But he names the catch: one key channel is labor-market disruption, "which has negative near-term macroeconomic effects."

Labor markets in developed economies still look solid overall, he wrote. But Goldman is finding 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 shows a statistically significant negative correlation with employment growth and a statistically significant positive correlation with unemployment.

That's correlation, not proven causation. It's still one of the cleanest sector-level signals yet that AI adoption and headcount growth are moving in opposite directions in services industries where most Americans work.

Takeaway: in industries adopting AI, hiring is slowing and unemployment is ticking up — a pattern worth watching in your own sector.

Where the two economists split

Goldman's base case is optimism. Hatzius expects AI investment to deliver higher productivity and profits across the economy. A fading boost from last year's restoration of 100% bonus depreciation (immediate write-offs of equipment purchases, reinstated under the One Big Beautiful Bill) will also weigh on capital spending, especially in the U.S., he 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."

Both notes point the same direction for the next year: the AI growth impulse crests, rates stay elevated, and the labor-market effects of adoption spread beyond tech.