Apple cuts internal AI spending limits as R&D costs jump 32% under CEO Ternus cost push (Nov 4)
What happened
Apple is cutting the daily AI tooling budgets of its employees as it tries to control rising costs. Per Bloomberg, the company recently trimmed the daily AI spending limit for some engineers by 33%, from $300 to $200, with further cuts to $100 under consideration; non-engineering staff on $100 daily caps could be cut to $25 for some teams, though special approvals remain possible. The budgets cover usage of models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, which bill per token processed and get expensive for code-heavy work. Some employees were reportedly using well under the old $300 cap, so the reductions may yield limited actual savings.
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Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- AAPL: cost discipline vs. investor questions about Apple's AI ambition; tighter internal AI spend cuts against the stock's post-earnings 'anti-AI play' bounce
- GOOGL, OpenAI/ChatGPT usage: signals Apple nudging teams toward cheaper or on-device models instead of paid third-party inference, a small read-through for external AI tooling providers
Sources