Are the 493 companies that barely joined the AI rally next?

Excluding the Magnificent 7, the other 493 companies in the S&P 500 are estimated to have grown earnings 22.8% year over year in the second quarter of 2026. The Magnificent 7 grew 31.1% in the same quarter, which puts the gap between the two groups at 8.3 points.

Are Magnificent 7 Companies Still Top Contributors to S&P 500 Earnings Growth for Q2? (FactSet, 2026-07-20)

출처: insight.factset.com

One quarter earlier that gap was far wider. In Q1 2026 the Magnificent 7 grew 63.2% against 17.4% for the other 493. In a single quarter the gap shrank to less than a fifth of what it was. This is the ground on which the social-arbitrage investor Chris Camillo is placing his bet. He expects the largest earnings boom in decades at the many companies that barely joined the AI rally.

What narrowed was a percentage

A growth rate climbs easily from a low base. A company whose earnings fell hard a year ago posts a big growth number on a modest recovery. So a narrowing percentage on its own does not tell you where the money went. Measured in dollars the picture changes.

In percentages the gap closed; in dollars two companies still took most of it. The two numbers describe the same quarter and say different things.

The productivity statistics are still quiet

Camillo's case rests on the premise that AI has to raise productivity before it can raise profits. That productivity is measured for the whole economy every quarter. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts nonfarm business labour productivity up 1.4% annualised in Q2 2026. The first quarter was 0.8%, and the year-over-year rate is 2.2%. The current cycle since late 2019 averages 2.1% a year, above the 1.5% of the 2007 to 2019 cycle. That is a mild improvement rather than anything worth calling a boom.

AI's productivity gains do not show up in the data, and the St. Louis Fed went through the earnings calls (Fortune, 2026-07-31)

출처: fortune.com

The St. Louis Fed read through about 490,000 corporate earnings calls from 2000 to 2025. The share of productivity discussion that mentioned AI rose to about 15% by the end of 2025, and roughly 95% of it described gains still expected rather than gains already booked.

Looking at the same stretch through the earnings accounts or through the productivity statistics is what splits the answer.

The quarter that passes the Magnificent 7

The bridge between the two readings is labour cost. The fastest way for AI to lift profit is to remove work people were doing, and that shows up in the statistics as job cuts first. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 33,429 announced US job cuts in July 2026, of which 10,970 named AI as the reason. About a quarter of this year's cumulative cuts carried the same reason, and it was the most-cited reason for five months running. The numbers are already moving, but whether the saved wages stay as profit only shows up in the following quarter's accounts. So whether Camillo was right is settled by the order of the two groups' growth rates rather than by the index. If the other 493 outgrow the Magnificent 7 in the fourth-quarter tally, the profits really did spread; if the order holds, the narrowed gap was a low base doing the work.