AI Premium

2026-06-29

AI Summary

This study investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) affects firm value and labor markets, introducing a novel high-frequency tradable AI factor constructed from 380 trillion tokens of real-world AI usage data to estimate firm-level AI betas. Employing high-dimensional panel regressions, asset pricing models, and long–short portfolio backtests, the analysis reveals that firms with higher AI betas earn significantly higher subsequent returns, generating an average weekly long–short return of 64.1 basis points. The AI premium is concentrated among users of closed-source models, paying sophisticated users, and scenarios involving longer prompts, and it extends notably to consumer- and capital-intensive sectors, though it is insignificant in emerging markets. This work innovatively links AI consumption behavior, occupational skill structures, and capital market pricing, uncovering heterogeneous financial and economic effects of AI diffusion.

Abstract

Using 380 trillion tokens of realized AI consumption across more than four hundred large language models from the licensed proprietary OpenRouter dataset covering approximately 2 percent of current global monthly AI token consumption, we analyze how AI affects firms, markets, and workers. Leveraging the unprecedented size, scope and granularity data, we construct the AI Factor from growth in tokens, dollars, and users, estimate firm-level AI Betas from stock return comovement, and characterize the AI Premium. First, we build a high-frequency AI factor and decompose it into salient components. Second, we show that firms whose returns covary more positively with the AI factor--high AI beta firms--earn higher subsequent returns, and the AI premium is large and heterogeneous. A value-weighted long-short strategy earns 64.1 basis points per week, and the premium is large for loadings on the intensive, frontier-oriented margin of AI consumption-closed-source models, paying and seasoned users, and long prompts--but not on casual or open-weight use. Third, the premium reaches beyond technology firms into consumer-facing and capital-heavy parts of the economy, but is absent in emerging markets, including China. Fourth, the AI exposure is more positive in nonroutine interactive work and the more negative in analytical, scientific, and operations-control skills--an occupation one standard deviation higher in interaction-and-communication content has 0.36-standard-deviation higher market-implied AI premium. Additionally, we provide early evidence of the rise of the agentic economy.

Problem

• AI Premium
• AI Factor
• Firm-level AI Exposure
• Stock Return Comovement
• Agentic Economy

Innovation

• AI Factor
• AI Premium
• AI Beta
• Agentic Economy
• Token Consumption