Financial markets are rewarding companies that are well positioned to benefit from the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) with higher returns, according to a new analysis conducted by Yale of 380 trillion AI Tokens, one of the largest data sets in the real world AI Consumption ever examined.
The difference in stock returns between companies with the most and the lowest AI The exposure is significant – about 0.64% per week, a financial benefit that the researchers describe as “AI Premium.”
And it’s not just tech companies whose stock prices are rising AI Adoption is increasing, but consumer-facing sectors and capital-intensive industries are also increasing, the study found. This suggests that investors believe that many types of companies can benefit AI-driven productivity, said Yale economist Aleh Tsyvinski, co-author of the study.
For the study, researchers analyzed 380 trillion AI Tokens – the basic data units that AI Read or generate models as they perform tasks from a licensed, proprietary dataset from OpenRouter, a digital platform that routes requests to more than 400 AI models, including GPTClaude and Deepseek, from January 2024 to April 2026. The dataset represents 2% of monthly global data AI Used by millions of anonymous users during this period.
Researchers leveraged the dataset’s unprecedented size, scope and granularity to better understand how rapidly evolving technology is impacting businesses, markets and workers in the United States and around the world.
“Previous studies on the economic impact of AI have largely relied on surveys and estimates, but our work is based on unprecedented amounts of real data and provides a much more detailed look at how things are done AI Consumption impacts the economy,” said Tsyvinski, the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics in Yale’s School of Arts and Sciences. “Our analysis shows that.” AIThe emergence of is not just a technology story, but a much broader story that affects businesses and workers across all parts of the economy. We show that it is already having a strong impact on financial markets.”
The study, a working paper from the National Bureau of Economics Research, was co-authored by Nicola Borri, associate professor of finance at Luiss University in Italy, and Yukun Liu, associate professor of finance at the University of Rochester. Yale’s Data-Intensive Social Science Center assisted the researchers with licensing and management of the OpenRouter dataset.
For their analysis, the researchers created what they called “AI Factor,” a weekly measure of global growth AI Consumption. They then examined which companies’ share prices tend to rise AI Usage is increasing. The analysis found that these companies typically generated higher future stock returns than companies with less exposure to stocks AI consumption, the “AI Premium.” They noted that beyond the technology sector, retail and consumer durables also benefit from exposure, as do companies with large physical assets, such as manufacturers.
(In this context, “exposure” is a measure of market expectations. It means that investors expect companies to benefit from the increase in productivity they cause AI Introduction, not that these companies directly benefit from it AI Today.)
The study found that the beneficiaries of the AI “Premium” companies are most concentrated in the United States, Europe and other developed markets, where investors and companies are closely connected to leading companies AI Development, infrastructure and construction. It is less pronounced in China and other emerging economies (defined as countries whose economies are moving from developing to developed status).
“Stock markets are now rewarding companies’ proximity to the most disruptive models in the United States and Europe,” Liu said.
The study also showed that investors value value AI Consumption that includes proprietary, advanced models, experienced users and paying customers, and longer, sophisticated prompts versus people casually experimenting with free or open source models.
“Despite the widespread and rapid adoption of AI Tools from everyday users who AI The premium is primarily determined by exposure to the border AI Consumption by sophisticated and professional users,” said Borri.
The researchers combined stock market data, state labor data and the data AI Consumption to gain insights into how AIThe continued emergence will impact workers across all sectors and industries.
They found that jobs that involve non-routine tasks – such as persuasion, teaching, communicating and interacting with people – have a more positive impact AI Consumption compared to jobs that involve routine work such as B. Jobs in healthcare and those that involve scientific analysis and other types of analytical work. That means investors believe that AI The researchers found that jobs that involve communication and coordination create greater economic opportunities than jobs that involve scientific analysis.
“Our analysis suggests that interactive skills are being rewarded in the workplace, while analytical skills are being disadvantaged as the growth of AI” said Tsyvinski. “Professions in science are among the hardest hit, which may seem surprising. A distinction must be made here between more routine laboratory work and the kind of cutting-edge scientific research that takes place at large research universities. According to our analysis, it is routine work that will be most affected AI.”
The study also showed an increase in the use of so-called active ingredients AI – Systems that not only answer questions, but can work autonomously to complete a task – over the time period covered by the OpenRouter data set. Use of active ingredients in 2024 AI Models only made up a small proportion AI Consumption. But by 2026 it will be more than half AI According to the study, the tokens were agent systems. In addition, the researchers found early evidence that companies’ dependence on the rise of the agent economy is increasingly playing an important role in determining their stock market valuations.
https://news.yale.edu/2026/07/13/analysis-380-trillion-ai-tokens-reveals-how-technology-transforming-financial-markets
