Apple Cuts Engineer AI Budgets From $300 to $200 a Day

By Grace Kim

Some Apple engineers had their daily AI spending limits cut from $300 to $200 last month, and a further reduction to $100 a day is on the table, Bloomberg reported this week. That's a one-third cut for teams the company simultaneously wants to build its future around artificial intelligence.

Apple, the world's most valuable company with a market capitalization of $4.98 trillion, is tightening internal budgets as it looks to cut costs while making AI central to its business. The math is unforgiving: employees are being told to rely more on AI and spend less doing so.

The cuts don't stop at engineering. Non-engineering teams currently get a $100 daily cap on AI use, and Apple is considering lowering that limit to as little as $25. Workers who need a bigger budget to do their jobs can request an exception — from senior executives.

What exactly is being rationed?

The limits apply to tokens — the chunks of text and other data that AI models process to answer a request. Providers typically bill by token volume, and the more sophisticated models cost more. Writing code and processing software burn a lot of tokens, which is why engineering allowances are higher in the first place.

That makes the new caps a direct constraint on how much AI-assisted engineering Apple can actually run internally. The takeaway: Apple is rationing the raw fuel of the very technology it says will transform its workflows.

Why are employees worried?

Bloomberg reported that Apple staff are split on the reductions. Some said the old $300 daily budget was more than most workers needed. Others see the cuts as the leading edge of a broader spending squeeze that could end in layoffs.

Those fears have a concrete anchor. Apple has brought in outside consultants to review how the company operates and where it could become more efficient. Bloomberg previously reported in late September that Apple's new CEO, John Ternus — who took over on September 1 — wants a faster, leaner organization with fewer layers of management.

For worried employees, a $100-a-day token cap reads less like cost hygiene and more like a signal. Every cut so far has landed while the consultants are still in the building.

Is Apple's spending actually falling?

No — the opposite. Apple said this week that its research and development spending rose 32% in fiscal year 2026, reaching $45.8 billion. Higher infrastructure and AI expenses drove the growth.

So the internal allowance cuts aren't shrinking Apple's total AI outlay; they're disciplining employee-level consumption while the company's headline investment keeps climbing. The tension between those two numbers is the real story.

Apple isn't alone in imposing caps:

• In June, Uber limited all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending.
• The same month, Meta said it planned to curb employee AI usage by adding token limits.
• One month later, Tesla told staff it would cap employee AI spending at $200 a week.

The industry-wide shift is clear: the era of letting employees freely experiment with AI is giving way to closer oversight of what that experimentation costs. Companies now have to cut spending without giving up the productivity gains they bought the tools for in the first place.

In short: token budgets are becoming a managed line item at the biggest names in tech — and how Apple balances its $45.8 billion R&D ramp against shrinking daily allowances will say a lot about where its efficiency push lands next.