On back-to-back days last week, two of the largest companies in the world put an AI number in front of their investors. TD Bank's chief executive said the bank had essentially hit its full-year target of two hundred million Canadian dollars in value from AI, with a quarter still to run. Salesforce said its customers had driven 3.2 billion "Agentic Work Units" in a single quarter, up 97% — a unit Salesforce invented six months ago, and which its own website defines as including "a prompt processed." Neither company published what it spent to get there.

A number without a denominator is not a return. It is a receipt.

In this episode, Stephen Forte covers:

• TD Bank's Q3 2026 earnings call (August 27, 2026): CEO Raymond Chun's exact words — "Three quarters into the year, we have essentially hit our fiscal 2026 target of $200 ...