The AI productivity payoff is coming. Here are 20 stocks primed to capture the gains as adoption spreads.

By Jamie Chisholm

So far investors have been focused on AI infrastructure plays rather than productivity beneficiaries, says Goldman Sachs

EBay is among the companies that Goldman Sachs sees as an artificial-intelligence adopter to keep an eye on.

Much of the second-quarter earnings season is in the bag, and equity-market bulls can argue the growth in corporate profits is acting as a fundamental support for stocks that sit around record highs.

Strategists at Goldman Sachs led by Ben Snider note that, even with "other income" related to some private investment stakes excluded, earnings-per-share growth so far for Q2 is 31% over the the same period last year.

The Goldman team estimates that artificial-intelligence infrastructure stocks have accounted for about half of that EPS growth. Still, earnings growth for the rest of the market has also been strong and accelerating, they observe, with the median S&P 500 company growing EPS by 14%.

However, in commentary published at the end of last week, Snider and colleagues also note that the "impact of AI adoption on corporate earnings still appears narrow."

So far this 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, Goldman notes. And just 2% quantified the impact of AI productivity on earnings, a similar share to that of the first quarter of 2026.

"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," Goldman says.

However, the bank believes that a recent acceleration in enterprise AI spending suggests that the earnings impact of AI adoption should become clearer in coming quarters.

"We estimate that AI inference expenses currently equate to less than 0.5% of S&P 500 revenues, but spending appears to have accelerated sharply in recent months," Goldman says, citing an upturn in the Ramp AI Index of monthly spend per employee.

And, as AI adoption increases, companies' productivity should improve. "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 U.S. data," says Goldman.

Currently, investors are more keen on AI infrastructure stocks than potential AI productivity beneficiaries, Goldman acknowledges. But this may shift, and so Goldman has run a screen for companies currently deemed most likely to benefit from AI adoption, with a particular focus on how the technology may reduce labor costs.

"To understand the labor cost sensitivity of firms, we use our estimate of each company's labor costs as a share of revenue based on reported data. For AI exposure, our economists calculate the share of each company's wage bill that is exposed to AI automation based on occupation-level data from Revelio," says Goldman. Revelio Labs provides workforce analytics.

The Goldman team looks in its commentary at Russell 1000 RUI stocks that rank in the top 50% of their sector based on the share of their wage bill that is exposed to AI automation and also rank in the top 50% of their sector based on labor costs as a share of sales.

"We further limit the screen to companies that mentioned AI in the context of productivity or efficiency during their 2Q earnings calls. We exclude companies that fall into various GS AI infrastructure or AI disruption risk baskets," the Snider team adds.

The top 20 stocks in the screen, rated by their average rank for the labor-cost sensitivity and AI automation exposure, are the following: CoStar (CSGP), Dollar Tree (DLTR), eBay (EBAY), Arthur J. Gallagher (AJG), Brown & Brown (BRO), Axon Enterprises (AXON), Trade Desk (TTD), CMS Energy (CMS), Jacobs Solutions (J), Edison International (EIX), Aon (AON), Marsh & McLennan (MRSH), Kimberley-Clark (KMB), Willis Towers Watson (WTW), Airbnb (ABNB), Iron Mountain (IRM), CBRE (CBRE), RTX (RTX), Boeing (BA) and Expedia (EXPE).

The markets

U.S. stock-indices SPX DJIA COMP are mixed at the opening bell on Wall Street as Treasury yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y rise. The dollar index DXY is lower, as oil futures (CL.1) climb and gold futures (GC00) trade around $4,440 an ounce.

 
Key asset performance                                                Last       5d     1m      YTD     1y 
S&P 500                                                              7785.76    0.36%  4.40%   13.74%  20.71% 
Nasdaq Composite                                                     26,729.16  0.14%  4.74%   15.00%  23.61% 
10-year Treasury                                                     4.689      -2.40  9.20    51.70   34.90 
Gold                                                                 4452.9     0.10%  11.00%  2.79%   31.82% 
Oil                                                                  82.47      0.21%  0.06%   43.65%  31.78% 
Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points 

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The buzz

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) has increased its bet on the U.S. housing market, regulatory filings show.

The U.S. has urged Apple (AAPL) not to buy Chinese memory chips.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a cut to military drills with South Korea, saying he has a "very good relationship" with Kim Jong Un, North Korea's dynastic dictator.

A batch of retail earnings this week, from the likes of Home Depot (HD), Target (TGT) and Walmart (WMT), may offer a guide to the health of the U.S. consumer.

JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon has warned U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey against creating a more hostile tax environment for banks, according to the Financial Times.

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey was 20.6 in August, up from 15.6 the month before, and well above economist's forecasts of 12.

The 'Country Hicks' who refused $26 million from an AI data center.

The chart

Source: BTIG

The average year sees the New York Stock Exchange experience 21 days when downside volume is 80% or more of the action, according to BTIG's technical guru Jonathan Krinsky. Such days occur when there is broad selling. So far this year there have been zero such sessions, he notes.

Top tickers

Here were the most active stock-market ticker symbols on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern.

 
Ticker symbol  Security name 
NVDA           Nvidia 
SPCX           SpaceX 
TSLA           Tesla 
MU             Micron Technology 
SNDK           Sandisk 
AMD            Advanced Micro Devices 
TSM            Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 
AAPL           Apple 
MSFT           Microsoft 
PLTR           Palantir Technologies 

Ferrari's first-ever electric car sells for a record.

-Jamie Chisholm

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08-17-26 0930ET

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