Apple wants its employees to use more AI, but spend less on it. According to Bloomberg, the company has cut the daily budget some engineers can spend on AI services from $300 to $200, and is planning more cuts. Apple didn’t comment on the report.
What’s official
The only public number comes from Apple’s own financials: research and development spending rose 32% in fiscal 2026, driven mainly by infrastructure and AI costs.
What Bloomberg reports
- Engineers: in October, the daily cap for some dropped from $300 to $200, with plans to take certain teams down to $100.
- Other teams: many already have a $100 daily cap, and Apple has considered lowering it to $25 in some cases. Anyone who needs more will have to request an exception from senior leadership.
- What they use: employees have access to several services, including Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Some teams have been told to switch to cheaper models or ones that run locally.
- Reactions: some employees say hardly anyone hit the $300 limit; others worry it’s a prelude to broader cost cuts.
It’s not just Apple
Other big companies have done something similar: Uber capped spending on AI coding tools at $1,500 a month, Tesla set a $200 weekly limit, and Microsoft and Meta have also tightened internal budgets. After months of encouraging AI use without looking at the bill, companies are starting to ration it.
My take
$200 per person per day is still a lot of money, close to a full year of a basic AI subscription. The news isn’t that Apple is using less AI, but that it’s starting to check whether it pays off. That fits a Ternus who wants a leaner Apple that is also more ambitious about AI. Pushing teams toward local models makes sense for a company that brags about on-device processing. What worries me more is staff fearing a restructuring: rumors like that rarely stop at the AI bill.
Does your company limit AI use too? Let me know in the comments or on social media.
Sources: Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, heise online, Technology.org (R&D spending and other companies). As of November 9, 2026.
