Apple set to slash employee AI token spending as new CEO John Ternus looks to cut costs
- Apple is reportedly cutting AI budgets per worker
- Developers will still likely have more than other workers
- Model choice and hosting provider could be enough to cut costs
Apple has reportedly started cutting the amount employees can spend on artificial intelligence, per Bloomberg reporting, making it one of the latest companies to be limiting AI tool expenditure as unpredictable costs skyrocket.
The Cupertino giant had already reportedly cut budgets from $300 per engineer per day to $200 in October 2026, but further reductions are said to be planned as this figure could be on track to drop to $100.
Non-engineers are likely to face even tougher restrictions, with the company considering a 75% cut from $100 to $25 per worker per day, the report claims.
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Apple could be set to limit workers’ AI budgets
Like other tech giants that have introduced similar cuts, budgets will likely be determined by team and project, and certain projects and individuals could be able to justify higher consumption if their work requires it. However Apple declined to comment on Bloomberg’s story.
Workers could also be asked to reconsider the tools they use, with the company said to be permitting the use of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, rather than just one. Engineers may be asked to use lesser models, which are cheaper, or even transfer workloads to even cheaper models that run locally on the company’s own hardware.
UK digital bank Revolut has already moved away from Claude in favor of open-weight models hosted on its own infrastructure.
While a budget cut from $300 to, possibly, $100 per day may sound like a 3x decrease, it might be more attainable for some workers than those figures suggest. Earlier AI efforts among tech giants saw developers so-called ‘tokenmaxxing’ – using AI more than they really needed to, just to appease company metrics. It’s unclear whether this applies to Apple’s developers.
Still, the company likely faces an expensive short-term future, with R&D expenditure up 32% in FY 2026 compared with FY 2025, and total operating expenses up 22%. Quarterly revenue rose just 12% year-over-year, in comparison.
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