Some Apple engineers could once spend $300 a day on AI tools. Last month that fell to $200, and some teams may soon get $100. Staff outside engineering, many already capped at $100 a day, could drop to as little as $25.
The cuts were reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the changes. Apple did not comment. Employees who need more can ask senior leaders for an exemption.
What the budget pays for
The limits cover tokens. A token is a small chunk of text or data that an AI model reads or writes, and providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google charge by the token. Long jobs like writing and fixing code burn through a lot of them, and the most capable models cost the most.
Apple staff can use Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, 9to5Mac reports. Some teams are now being told to switch to cheaper models, or to models that run on the device itself, where there is no per-token bill.
The number behind it
For scale, $300 a day over a typical year of about 250 working days comes to $75,000 per engineer, our own rough sum and a ceiling, not actual spend. A $100 cap brings that ceiling to $25,000.
Apple’s total spending is still rising fast. Its full-year results show research and development costs of $45.8 billion in the year to 26 September, up 32% from $34.6 billion. Apple has said the rise came mainly from infrastructure costs, including AI, and from headcount. Total operating expenses reached $75.5 billion, up 22%.
So the token caps are a small line in a very large budget. Bloomberg says it is unclear how much Apple will save, because many staff were not using their full allowance.
How staff are taking it
Reactions are mixed, according to Bloomberg. Some employees say the old $300 limit was more generous than anyone needed. Others read the cuts as a sign of wider cost cutting under new chief executive John Ternus and worry about layoffs. Some divisions have brought in outside consultants to review how they work.
Apple is not alone. Reuters, summarising the Bloomberg report, notes that Goldman Sachs recently restricted access to some AI coding tools after reviewing productivity and risk. AI bills can climb quickly when nobody is watching, as companies hit by stolen AI keys have found.
Why it matters
Companies spent the past two years telling staff to use AI as much as possible. Apple’s caps suggest the next phase is about cost per task, which will push workers toward cheaper and on-device models and make AI providers compete harder on price.
The post Apple Cuts Staff AI Budgets From $300 a Day as Its Costs Climb appeared first on DailyAI.
