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Applied AI·October 26, 2026·1 min read

Apollo’s Slok says US companies now treat AI spending as a cost, not growth

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If non‑tech corporates are seeing “zero financial payoff” from AI so far, boards will start treating AI budgets like experimental cost centers, not guaranteed growth engines. Operators should expect tougher hurdle rates and shorter patience—lock in 6–12 month, verifiable P&L impacts or risk seeing projects defunded.

Applied AI

Anthropic unveils plans for largest stock market listing in history — including investments 'that may seem irresponsibly large at first glance' despite losses of over $80 billion this year

Anthropic telegraphing “irresponsibly large” investments and $80B+ in losses reframes frontier AI as an infrastructure-scale bet, not a software-margin business—public markets are being asked to underwrite a new capex class. If you’re not playing at that scale, your edge has to be distribution, workflow depth, or regulated-domain expertise, not raw model spend.