On November 4, reports emerged that Apple is tightening its budget for employee use of artificial intelligence models in an effort to control costs. Last month, Apple already reduced the daily spending cap for some engineers using AI models from $300 to $200, and plans to further cut limits for certain engineering teams, potentially down to as low as $100. Some non-engineering teams already have a daily cap of $100, and Apple is also considering reducing some teams' limits to $25. Employees who require a higher budget can apply to senior company executives for an exemption. Currently, Apple employees can use services such as Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, and some teams have been asked to switch to lower-cost models or locally run AI models. Apple's fiscal year 2026 research and development spending increased by 32% year over year, while the company's overall operating expenses rose 22% to $75.5 billion.