Apple Cuts Engineer AI Spend Caps to $200/Day, Plans $100 Floor

Apple cut some engineers' daily AI-tool spending cap from $300 to $200 last month, and is planning further reductions that could go as low as $100 for some teams, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. Non-engineering staff already live under a $100 daily cap, and Apple has considered lowering that to $25 for some teams.

Employees who need more can seek exemptions from senior executives. The covered services include Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Some teams are being encouraged to use cheaper models or ones that run locally on their devices.

A wrinkle in the story: few workers were using their full $300 daily allowance in the first place, according to 9to5Mac's writeup of the report. But 'others see the reductions as a sign of broader cost cutting, adding to concerns about potential layoffs.'

The move lands under CEO John Ternus, who became chief executive on 1 September and has, per Gurman, 'pushed Apple to run faster and leaner, and has cut layers of management.' Apple's R&D costs rose 32% on AI and infrastructure, so the tightening is happening inside a line item that is still growing fast.