Apple’s fiscal 2026 filing shows R&D expense reached $45.765 billion, while Bloomberg News reported the company was weighing further staff AI budget cuts after lowering some limits in October.
The filing puts R&D expense 32% above the $34.550 billion recorded the prior year. Apple’s fiscal year ended Sept. 26, 2026. The company attributed the increase to greater infrastructure spending, including AI investment, and higher personnel costs. Its public filing does not confirm the employee spending limits described in Bloomberg’s report. Apple also reported $75.539 billion in operating expenses, up 22% from a year earlier and equal to 16% of net sales.
Apple’s Form 10-K says its AI and machine-learning offerings depend on computing and storage. It describes stronger industry demand as making those resources harder to secure and more costly, and says Apple also uses outside cloud providers.
Bloomberg News reported Nov. 4, citing people familiar with the changes, that Apple lowered some engineers’ daily AI caps in October to $200 from $300. The outlet said some engineering groups could face $100 daily limits. Many non-engineering teams already had $100 caps, and Apple was considering a $25 ceiling for some of them. Employees seeking a higher allowance could request approval from senior leaders. Bloomberg said the budgets cover tokens, the data processed by AI models, and that some teams were directed toward cheaper models or on-device AI. The report listed Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini among services available to staff. Bloomberg did not say how many employees would be affected or quantify savings so far.
Bloomberg described mixed reactions among employees. Some said few workers used their full $300 daily allowance; others viewed the changes as part of broader cost controls and worried about possible layoffs. The report did not establish that Apple plans layoffs. Bloomberg said an Apple spokesperson declined to comment. It gave no implementation date for the proposed further reductions.
