AI spending and ROI: winners, laggards, and the debate over returns

Enterprise AI spending creates clear winners (Samsung 250x profit, Hon Hai 54% sales, Palantir/Cloudflare guidance raises) vs laggards (AMD miss, Apple drop). $750B spend vs $175B revenue gap argued misleading due to build lag. Budget discipline, open-weight models, and industrial M&A reshape deployment. Tencent's negative FCF highlights global trade-offs.