This is a complete misrepresentation of what the Apollo piece can actually show, because it's not measuring the "payoff" of AI investments, but only the top level revenue of those companies (https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-s...).

This is a healthy corrective to the most insane AI maximalist takes (mass disemployment in late 2027, 10% GDP growth in a year), but it shows nothing about whether the actual economic impact of AI spending is.

First, to show that, you'd have to justify the counterfactuals (if those companies hadn't spent on AI, would their position be better or worse?)

Second, while AI spending is increasing rapidly, normal companies aren't spending 1% of their revenue on it. So how can you look at a noisy chart of revenue and expect that "oh, it's not up, the AI spending must be useless?" Those companies could be spending < 1% of their revenue on AI, deriving value from it, and it wouldn't be guaranteed to show in a chart like this.