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Investing.com -- Second-quarter earnings season was strong across the S&P 500, with AI infrastructure companies once again driving much of the growth.
S&P 500 earnings per share grew 31% year-over-year in the quarter, excluding one-time income tied to private investment stakes. AI infrastructure stocks, including hyperscalers, accounted for roughly half of that growth, with their earnings up 54% year-over-year.
But the rest of the market also performed well. Excluding the energy sector, which benefited from higher oil prices, the median S&P 500 company grew earnings 14% year-over-year.
Still, despite the broad strength, the actual earnings impact from AI adoption remains narrow, Goldman strategists led by Ben Snider said. Just 11% of S&P 500 companies quantified how AI productivity affected a specific business use case, such as coding or customer support, during earnings calls. Only 2% quantified AI’s impact on earnings directly, matching the share seen in the first quarter.
Goldman found no meaningful earnings difference between companies that quantified AI productivity gains and those that didn’t. "Q2 results showed a small and statistically insignificant difference in earnings growth between the companies quantifying AI productivity gains this quarter and other S&P 500 companies," the strategists wrote.
Still, they expect that picture to sharpen. Enterprise AI spending has accelerated sharply in recent months. The Ramp AI Index shows monthly AI spend per employee at the median company rising from $5 in January to $12 in July, while top-decile spenders now pay $650 per employee monthly, up from $240 at the start of the year.
AI inference costs remain small overall, estimated at under 0.5% of S&P 500 revenues. Roughly two-thirds of companies fund that spending by reallocating existing budgets, most commonly from software (18%) and labor (11%), based on Goldman’s IT Spending Survey.
There’s limited evidence so far that AI is cannibalizing software spending broadly, even as some companies, including Starbucks, build in-house AI tools to replace third-party software. Software revenue growth has actually accelerated slightly in recent quarters, and the sector’s stocks have recovered earlier losses.
This uncertainty, the strategists argue, helps explain investor behavior: markets have rewarded AI infrastructure stocks with clear, near-term earnings benefits, while avoiding bets on which companies will ultimately capture AI-driven productivity gains.
