For years, the winning trade on Wall Street was simple: buy anything touched by artificial intelligence and wait. That trade is now running in reverse, and Goldman Sachs built an entire index to prove it.
The S&P 500 ex-AI index, ticker SPXXAI, has outperformed the regular S&P 500 since late June. Investors are piling into sectors with minimal AI exposure, including biotech, regional banks, and consumer entertainment, treating the absence of AI as a feature rather than a bug.
The index Wall Street didn’t know it needed
Goldman Sachs launched SPXXAI on February 20, 2026, in collaboration with S&P Dow Jones Indices. The concept is straightforward: take the S&P 500 and remove the companies enabling the AI boom.
The excluded AI-enabling companies represent about 45% of the S&P 500’s total market capitalization. Over the three years leading up to the launch, the full S&P 500 delivered a total return of 76%. The ex-AI version? Just 32%.
