- An S&P 500 ex-AI index briefly pulled past the S&P 500 and is now tied with a roughly 12% return.
- It overtook the benchmark after trailing for most of 2026.
- The crossover followed a sharp selloff in AI-linked stocks.
A version of the S&P 500 without AI briefly pulled ahead of the traditional index this year and is now neck-and-neck as investors rotate into other areas of the market.
A proprietary Goldman Sachs index tracking the S&P 500 without stocks classified as “AI enablers” was up 12.4% through Oct. 22, edging ahead of the standard S&P 500′s 12% gain. The Goldman index is now neck-and-neck with the S&P 500 as tech rallied in Monday trading.
Tech and AI-related companies make up about 45% of the S&P 500. That heavy weighting has helped power the index for years, but it’s turned into a liability lately; the S&P 500 tech sector is down about 7% this month while other sectors have held up.
Investors have soured on debt and equity issued by companies like CoreWeave and Oracle. Shares of Meta Platforms sank almost 7% Thursday after it outlined more plans to spend heavily on capex and issue additional shares.
Companies supplying power and equipment for the buildout have been hit hard — names like GE Vernova, Bloom Energy, Vistra and Quanta Services all suffered steep declines during the recent selloff.
Goldman, which launched the measure earlier this year with S&P, uses the S&P 500 as its starting universe and excludes companies perceived to be enablers of AI before applying S&P 500 Index weighting methodology to the remaining universe of companies.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/26/sp-500-ex-ai-index-tech-selloff.html