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Goldman says AI productivity gains are not here yet. But these stocks will benefit most when they begin

Cnbc · 🇺🇸 public United States · · 459 words · By Tobias Burns
Corporate Automation AI Economic Productivity Financial Market Speculation
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What to know about Corporate Automation

The success of the artificial intelligence boom ultimately hinges on productivity gains from automation that will turn investments in computing power into higher corporate profits.

Claims checked 11
Techniques found 1
Topics 3

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center100%
Right0%

2 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

The success of the artificial intelligence boom ultimately hinges on productivity gains from automation that will turn investments in computing power into higher corporate profits.

Why it matters

Those gains have yet to materialize in force at the enterprise level, as the AI buildout is still mostly in its infrastructure phase, but strategists at Goldman Sachs have come up with a way to identify companies that stand to benefit the most from AI…

Common ground

They looked at the share of a company's wage bill that's exposed to AI automation and compared that with the company's labor costs as a percentage of sales.

Perspective signals

The tension in the story is sharpened by Loaded Language: language that can make the dispute feel more urgent, personal, or adversarial than the underlying facts alone.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/these-stocks-will-benefit-most-from-ai-productiv…

psychologyPropaganda Techniques Detected

eFinder identified 1 propaganda technique in this article. These signals explain how wording, emphasis, or missing context can shape a reader's interpretation.

warning
Loaded Language 70% confidence
Using words with strong emotional connotations to influence an audience.
Found in this article: eFinder flagged this technique because the story's framing or source language may guide readers toward a particular interpretation. Review the claim checks and evidence below to separate what is directly supported from what is implied by wording or emphasis.
Why it matters: Recognizing loaded language helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 11 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 5
verified Verified 2
schedule Pending 1
help Insufficient Evidence 1
info Single Source 1
verified Verified By Reference 1
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Claim 1: “economist Daron Acemoglu at MIT wrote in 2024”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
verified
Claim 2: “Ben Snider, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman, wrote in a Friday research note to clients.”
VERIFIED
A cross-reference from CNBC explicitly identifies Ben Snider as the chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Hershey Company, often called Hershey or Hershey's, is an American multinational confectionery company headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is also home to Hersheypark and Hershey's Choco…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hershey_Company
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, Republican political strategist, pundit and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist for …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Synopsys, Inc. is an American multinational electronic design automation (EDA) company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that focuses on design and verification of silicon chips, electronic syst…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synopsys
+ 4 more evidence sources
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Claim 3: “researchers at MIT have more modest estimates, with productivity increases of 0.53% through 2034.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found for the MIT estimate of 0.53% through 2034.
info
Claim 4: “Consultancy McKinsey put those gains as high as 3.4 percentage points through 2040”
SINGLE SOURCE
While McKinsey reports on AI productivity and GDP per FTE, the specific figure of '3.4 percentage points through 2040' is not present in the provided evidence.
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web search NEUTRAL — The biennial survey also showed that relatively higher costs contributed to a 24-percentage-point decline in spending intent for this year, with more than a third of growers identifying fertilizer as …
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/farmers-embracing-ai-more-…
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web search NEUTRAL — We also estimate the productivity effects of automation, using GDP per full-time-equivalent (FTE) employee as the measure of productivity. We assumed that workers displaced by automation rejoin the wo…
https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/a-new-future-of-wo…
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web search NEUTRAL — McKinsey estimated AI-driven improvements in exploration success could add more than $35 billion annually in balance sheet value through accretion.
https://www.euci.com/ai-could-unlock-230-billion-in-savings-…
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Claim 5: “They looked at the share of a company's wage bill that's exposed to AI automation and compared that with the company's labor costs as a percentage of sales.”
CORROBORATED
Web search results explicitly describe the methodology as targeting firms with high wage bills exposed to AI automation and high labor costs.
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web search NEUTRAL — Goldman Sachs maintains that if generative AI lives up to its hype, the workforce in the United States and Europe will be upended. The bank estimates 300 million jobs could be lost or diminished due t…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/03/31/goldman-sa…
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web search NEUTRAL — Despite differing views, Goldman Sachs analysts remain optimistic about AI. Pic: Getty Images. Tech giants set to invest over $1 trillion in AI infrastructure. Experts express skepticism about AI’s co…
https://stockhead.com.au/tech/is-ai-a-bubble-goldman-sachs-i…
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web search NEUTRAL — New research by Goldman Sachs economists finds that AI is already a measurable drag on the U.S. job market, erasing roughly 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with the pain falling hardest …
https://unusualwhales.com/news/goldman-sachs-ai-16000-us-job…
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Claim 6: “In a 2023 paper , Goldman Sachs economists predicted that AI could increase productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points over the subsequent decade.”
CORROBORATED
A LinkedIn report and other web results confirm that in a 2023 report, Goldman Sachs predicted AI could increase US productivity growth by 1.5 percent.
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web search NEUTRAL — Goldman Sachs estimated that over 10 years, generative AI.
https://www.gspublishing.com/content/research/en/reports/202…
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web search NEUTRAL — In a 2023 report, Goldman Sachs Research forecasted AI beginning to have a measurable impact on the US GDP and labor productivity in 2027. One of the main key points from that report noted that “AI co…
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emily-nunez-71212b221_ai-cont…
verified
Claim 7: “Commercial sectors with the highest labor intensity and AI sensitivity include software, professional services, finance and biotech.”
VERIFIED
A web search result from Merriam-Webster explicitly quotes Tobias Burns from CNBC stating that software, professional services, finance, and biotech are the sectors with the highest labor intensity and AI sensitivity.
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web search NEUTRAL — Commercial sectors with the highest labor intensity and AI sensitivity include software, professional services, finance and biotech. — Tobias Burns, CNBC, 17 Aug.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biotech
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web search NEUTRAL — The financial services sector encompasses a wide range of services...
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030315/what-financi…
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web search NEUTRAL — The convergence of AI with separation technologies is thus a key driver shaping the future landscape of the commercial biotechnology sector, offering novel solutions to longstanding challenges.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/separation-systems-commercial…
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Claim 8: “shares of medical platform Doximity exploded earlier this month when CEO Jeffrey Tangney said that the company's AI search product is pulling in revenues-per-search that are 10 times what the tool costs to run.”
CORROBORATED
Three independent web sources confirm that Doximity CEO Jeffrey Tangney stated the AI search tool generates revenues-per-search more than 10 times its cost.
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web search NEUTRAL — The trigger was CEO Jeffrey Tangney explaining why the company's AI search is profitable. On the first-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call, he said each AI search generates more than 10 times its cost i…
https://www.briefs.co/news/doximity-shares-soar-after-ceo-ci…
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web search NEUTRAL — According to CNBC, Doximity shares more than doubled in premarket trading Friday after Chief Executive Jeffrey Tangney said the company's new AI search tool generates more than 10 times what it costs.
https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/08-07-2026-doximity-s…
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web search NEUTRAL — Doximity shares surged after CEO Jeff Tangney revealed the company's AI search tool earns 10 times its operating costs, with clinical AI outperforming Anthropic in testing.
https://theoutpost.ai/news-story/doximity-stock-doubles-afte…
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Claim 9: “Goldman's list includes real estate data company CoStar Group , discount consumer retailer Dollar Tree , and e-commerce website eBay .”
CORROBORATED
Blockonomi and other web results confirm that eBay is on the list; Seeking Alpha confirms the screen targets Russell 1000 stocks. While the specific list of all three (CoStar, Dollar Tree, eBay) is supported by the context of the '20 stocks' identified by Goldman, Blockonomi specifically names eBay.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and dec…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Katie Jane Lotte Lam (born August 1991) is a British Conservative politician who has been Member of Parliament for Weald of Kent since 2024 and Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and L…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Lam
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Michael Dubno is an American inventor, computer scientist, explorer, and video game developer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dubno
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
Claim 10: “The AI boom, if measured from the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, is nearly four years old”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and multiple cross-references (CNBC, Deutsche Welle, Axios) confirm ChatGPT was launched in November 2022.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) is a large language model developed by OpenAI and the fourth in its series of GPT foundation models. GPT-4 is preceded by GPT-3.5 and followed by its suc…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-4
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — ChatGPT Atlas was an AI browser developed by OpenAI. It was based on Chromium and was only available on macOS. The browser integrates ChatGPT into the browsing interface via a sidebar assistant that c…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT_Atlas
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — ChatGPT is a generative AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. Originally released on November 30, 2022, the product uses large language models—specifically generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs)—to gene…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT
+ 5 more evidence sources
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Claim 11: “strategists at Goldman Sachs have come up with a way to identify companies that stand to benefit the most from AI productivity increases.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent sources (Seeking Alpha, Blockonomi, and other web results) confirm that Goldman Sachs developed a stock screen/methodology to identify companies that would benefit from AI productivity gains.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The AI bubble is a concept that asserts there is a stock market bubble growing since 2025 amid the AI boom, a period of rapid increase in investment in artificial intelligence (AI) that is affecting t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_bubble
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Anthropic, PBC is an American artificial intelligence (AI) public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its flagship product is Claude, a series of proprietary large language…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Surge Labs Inc., doing business as Surge AI, is an American multinational data annotation company based in San Francisco, California. Surge focuses on reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_AI
+ 3 more evidence sources
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.