Apple has cut the daily budget some engineers are allotted for internal AI tool use by a third, from $300 to $200, according to Bloomberg, which reported the change took effect in October and said further reductions — potentially down to $100 a day for some teams — are being considered. Employees outside engineering already face a $100 daily cap in many groups, and Apple has discussed lowering that further to $25 for some of them.
The caps govern how much Apple employees can spend each day on internal AI coding and productivity tools, measured in the computing "tokens" those systems consume. Workers who need more can request an exemption from senior leaders, according to the report, suggesting the policy is meant to curb routine overuse rather than block AI tools outright.
A cost-conscious moment
The timing is notable: the cuts follow John Ternus's formal transition to chief executive on September 1, when Tim Cook moved to the role of executive chairman after 14 years running the company. Bloomberg ties the AI budget reductions directly to Ternus's broader push to tighten costs. It is also the second visible belt-tightening move tied to Apple's AI organization this year — the company cut more than 200 jobs across its Siri and Vision Pro teams in August, as part of a restructuring aimed at accelerating development of an AI-powered version of Siri built on new technical architecture.
Whether the policy change will actually save Apple significant money is unclear even by Bloomberg's own account: the report notes many employees weren't using their full allowances before the cut, meaning the realized savings could be smaller than the headline numbers suggest. Employee reaction has reportedly been mixed, with some workers reading the cuts as a sign that further job losses could follow — a concern sharpened by the memory of August's layoffs. For a company that has spent much of 2026 trying to demonstrate it is serious about catching up on AI after a slow start, tightening the spigot on its own engineers' AI usage is an unusual way to make that case, even if the dollar amounts involved are modest.
