GS: Despite the widespread strength of corporate profit growth, the impact of AI adoption on earnings still appears narrow.

Our economists have noted that academic studies and company anecdotes show a 20-30% uplift in labor productivity in the limited areas where generative AI has been deployed, and they find that industries with higher AI adoption rates are showing a slight acceleration in productivity growth over the past year in official US data.

During the Q2 earnings season, 11% of S&P 500 companies quantified the impact of AI productivity on a specific use case, such as coding or customer support, and 2% quantified the impact of AI productivity on earnings.

Both of these were similar to the shares in Q1 2026. Earnings results showed a modest and statistically insignificant difference in earnings growth between the companies quantifying AI productivity gains this quarter and other S&P 500 companies.