Once you strip out Nvidia's chip-sales revenue, the actual measurable EPS/ROI lift from AI across the broader S&P 493 has been roughly 0-2%, not the eye-popping numbers often cited.
Chamath describes interrogating an AI model about S&P 500 earnings growth attributable to AI, finding the headline 50% figure was inflated by Nvidia's chip sales, and that the real EPS growth for the S&P 493 (ex-Nvidia-adjacent names) was mostly pricing power and buybacks, leaving true AI ROI near zero. ✦ AI generated
Chamath Palihapitiya · All-In Podcast · 2026-07-11 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 14:59
I asked, what is the lift of the S&P 500 earnings per share growth since 2024 from AI? And they answered, oh, it's 50%. So then I looked through it... I asked a different question, which is, then what was the EPS growth of the S&P 493? And the answer was 9%... the actual ROI was somewhere between zero and 2%.
verbatim transcript · starts at 14:59
14:59per share growth since 2024 from AI? And they answered, oh, it's 50%. So then I looked through it and I said, well, no, you're including the money that Nvidia makes from selling chips to Amazon. So I said, okay. I asked a different question, which is, then what was the EPS growth of the S&P 493? And the answer was 9%. And I said, "Okay, well that's different." And I said, "Unpack
15:25that." And the overwhelming majority of that was from pricing power sitting on top of inflation. And then the other 3% was from buybacks. And so the answer as far as all publicly available data was that the actual ROI was somewhere between zero and 2%. >> So I don't know. I mean I think that enterprise looks really good. The problem is that very smart investors like Brad and Gavin and others at some
15:59point will start asking companies what's your ROI? What's the actual EPS lift? And if the answer is, well, I don't really know or I'm not sure and you know, you don't necessarily have the pricing power to continue to raise prices. Enterprise is probably a little bit more brittle because there are fewer buyers and they're more demanding. Consumer on the other hand then all of a sudden becomes an incredible safe harbor
16:30because you have tens of millions of buyers and having those two orders of magnitude more buyers at a much smaller price point inoculates you from the vicissitudes of an ROI discussion. >> So it all really depends on what the actual ROI is of this money being spent. I think that we're in the phase of just being astonished, as Brad said, about the scale of the revenue growth.
16:56>> Yeah. >> But at some point, you'd have to be an idiot not to ask, well, who is paying you this? And can they sustain paying it to you? I just don't know what the answer to that question is. And at some point, it may not be now, >> at some point, people will have to answer that question. and you're spending million dollars a year on tokens