The Varosity AI GTM Report — Oct 24: Apollo Says AI Has Delivered Zero Payoff Outside Tech

Today Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok wrote that AI has delivered "zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech": revenue per worker and margins are flat for the S&P 493, and token spend is increasingly treated as a cost. The Information reported that Replit moved most of its AI spend from Anthropic to OpenAI after a 30%+ discount on a $100M+ a year contract. Moonshot's Kimi K3.1 Pro launch faces an unverified allegation of undisclosed paid creator promotion. Block unveiled Dessa, a voice model trained only on human speech that runs on a MacBook Pro. And AI film studio Utopai raised $60M at a $1B valuation. Today's stories: Apollo: AI has paid off nowhere outside tech : revenue per worker and margins are rising for the Mag 7 and flat for the S&P 493, there's no sign yet of a total factor productivity boost, and companies increasingly treat token spend as a margin cost. Apollo Daily Spark · The Decoder (June note) Replit moves $100M+ a year of AI spend to OpenAI : OpenAI gave more than 30% off after Anthropic declined to extend Replit's discount without a bigger commitment. Rippling data shows OpenAI's share of coding work up from 16% to 52%. The Information via Techmeme · AI Weekly · TechCrunch · TNW on discount terms Kimi K3.1 Pro launch hit by an undisclosed-creator-marketing allegation : screenshots allegedly show a brief telling creators not to add paid-partnership labels. They are unauthenticated, and no Moonshot response has been reported. RuntimeWire · Latent Space · Pekingnology Block unveils Dessa : a full-duplex speech-to-speech model trained only on human conversation audio, with no text, that runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max. Early access is limited to safety researchers. Crypto Briefing · Notebookcheck Utopai Studios raises $60M at a $1B valuation : the AI-native film studio has 20+ projects in the works and plans three theatrical features next year. The Information · Techmeme · Variety AI disclosure: this episode is AI-written and voiced by an AI host (Jack King) on Varosity.ai. Sponsored by Varosity.ai — one API and MCP server for 60+ AI video, image, voice and music models, every one at the provider's list price with no markup. Plans from $12/month or top up from $5; free daily credits to start. Connect your agent: https://varosity.ai/connect · Pricing: https://varosity.ai/pricing