Business · 2026-11-05

Apple Cuts Daily AI Spending Limits for Its Engineers: Why Companies Are Starting to Save on AI

Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have started limiting employees' spending on AI tools because the bills turned out to be much higher than expected.

✨ What Apple is changing

Apple is reducing budgets for using artificial intelligence inside the company. back in October, the company lowered the daily AI spending limit for engineering teams from $300 to $200 per day.

This is not the final limit. According to TechCrunch, Apple plans to cut some daily budgets to $100. For employees outside engineering, it is considering an even stricter limit of $25 per day.

📌 From “tokenmaxxing” to saving

Earlier this year, the tech industry was swept up in so-called “tokenmaxxing”. Companies pushed employees to use AI as much as possible and measured success with vague “efficiency” metrics. Tokens are chunks of text that AI models process, and the more they are used, the more they cost.

However, the enthusiasm quickly faded. When companies started receiving real bills, management decided it was smarter to limit AI spending.

🔹 What other companies are doing

In October, Amazon updated the guidelines for its programmers and warned them against “tokenmaxxing”. Engineers are now asked to focus on real business results and customer value, not on burning tokens for impressive statistics.

Earlier, in August, Microsoft also introduced restrictions. The reason was an employee who spent $28,000 on tokens in just one month. After that, the company, which had previously encouraged heavy AI use in development, introduced strict daily limits.

🔸 Why it matters

Tech companies still face a gap between the huge costs of building and maintaining AI and the often doubtful productivity gains the technology actually delivers. Apple's story shows that even the richest companies start counting money when AI becomes a regular expense.

Sources: 🔗 DOU/dev.ua