Not only Apple, many other technology giants such as Microsoft or Tesla are also cutting their employees' AI budgets.

Apple is encouraging employees to bring artificial intelligence (AI) deeper into their work, from programming to internal operations. But at the same time, the company has begun to tighten the amount of money employees are allowed to spend on these tools, as AI costs increasingly become an issue that needs to be controlled.

According to people familiar with internal decisions, last month Apple quietly reduced the daily AI spending limit of some engineers from $300 to $200. The company is currently considering further lowering this level to only 100 USD/day for some technical groups.

Departments outside the technical department are also not excluded from the adjustment. Many groups that have a limit of 100 USD/day can be reduced to only 25 USD. Employees who need to use AI more intensively can still apply for budget exceptions, but must be approved by senior leadership.

This move shows that Apple is having to solve a not simple problem: how to take advantage of AI to increase productivity without letting the cost of using technology get out of control.

AI tools typically charge based on tokens, units of data that the model processes when receiving requests and generating responses. Advanced models often cost more, while complex tasks like writing or debugging source code can consume large amounts of tokens. So, an engineer who uses AI regularly can generate significant bills for the business.

At Apple, employees now have access to many AI services such as Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini. However, some teams have been instructed to switch to less expensive models or use AI that runs directly on the device, instead of relying entirely on expensive cloud services.

Employee reaction to the decision was mixed. Some say that few employees actually used up the previous $300 per day limit, so the cuts wouldn't make much of a difference. On the contrary, others see this as a sign that Apple is entering a period of widespread cost tightening, raising concerns about possible restructuring and layoffs.

These concerns come as new CEO John Ternus is pushing Apple to operate leaner, with fewer layers of management. Some departments of the company have also hired outside consultants to evaluate performance, making employees more insecure about changes that may occur in the near future.

Notably, the internal AI budget cuts occurred at a time when Apple's total research and development costs increased sharply. In fiscal 2026, this spending increased 32%, primarily due to infrastructure and AI costs. The airline's total operating costs also increased by 22%, to 75.5 billion USD, equivalent to 16% of net revenue.

It is unclear how much Apple will save from lowering the AI ​​usage limit, especially when some employees do not use all the allocated budget. However, if cuts continue, those who regularly use AI will have to ask for more funding or switch to cheaper tools.

Apple is also not a special case. Microsoft has tightened internal AI spending limits, Tesla has imposed a limit of $200 per week for employees, and Uber has limited the use of some AI programming tools to $1,500 per month. Meta also implemented a token budget and encouraged employees to switch to AI tools developed by the company.

These moves show that technology corporations are moving from a phase of encouraging employees to experiment with AI to more strictly controlling its effectiveness and usage costs. For Apple, the challenge is not only to bring AI into more stages, but also to ensure that this investment is truly effective.