Verified
Apple
Experimenting- Consumer technology
- ~166,000 employees (Sep 2025)
- Enchanté, built in-house
- Apple, Claude and Gemini models
- AI usage not disclosed
Apple deploys AI internally through Enchanté, an internal assistant reportedly rolled out in Nov 2025 that offers Apple Foundation Models alongside Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, plus Claude-based coding tools for engineers and a generative AI assistant that answers AppleCare calls. Apple has confirmed none of these tools publicly and has never said how many employees use AI or what it returns. Software chief Craig Federighi has led Apple's AI models since Dec 2025 and reports to John Ternus, CEO since Sep 1, 2026.
machinelearning.apple.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- Enchanté is an internal ChatGPT-style assistant Apple reportedly rolled out to office staff from Nov 2025, and Enterprise Assistant answers policy and IT questions; Apple has not announced either tool (Macworld, Jan 2026).
- The models
- Enchanté reportedly offers Apple Foundation Models, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, Apple engineers use Claude-based coding tools, and Apple's next foundation models are built on Gemini technology (Jun 2026).
- The reach
- Apple has never said how many of its roughly 166,000 employees use AI; Macworld reported Enchanté in use across engineering, design, marketing and leadership in Jan 2026.
- The catch
- Apple has published no business return it credits to AI and no count of employees using AI tools, and nearly all that is known about Apple's internal AI comes from press reports and leaks.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~166,000
- Full-time equivalents, Sep 27, 2025 (2025 Form 10-K)
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- R&D $34.6B and capital spending $12.7B in fiscal 2025
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- Siri alone has hundreds of engineers (The Information, Apr 2026)
- Who owns AI
- Craig Federighi, SVP Software Engineering
- Leads foundation models, applied AI and Siri; VP of AI Amar Subramanya reports to him (Dec 2025)
- Platform
- Enchanté, built in-house
- Internal assistant reportedly rolled out in Nov 2025; not announced by Apple
- Models
- Apple Foundation Models, Claude, Gemini
- As reported inside Enchanté (Jan 2026); Claude Code for engineers
- Reach
- Not disclosed
- Enchanté reported in use across engineering, design, marketing and leadership (Jan 2026)
- Use cases
- Not disclosed
- Reported in engineering, AppleCare, retail, App Store review and corporate functions
Key findings
Apple gives office staff Enchanté, an internal ChatGPT-style assistant reportedly rolled out in Nov 2025 that offers Apple Foundation Models alongside Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, and Enterprise Assistant, a policy and IT chatbot built on Apple's own models, according to Macworld in Jan 2026; Apple has not confirmed either tool.
Anthropic's Claude is the outside model most often reported inside Apple's engineering: Claude Sonnet powered an internal Xcode build from May 2025, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg said in Jan 2026 that Apple runs custom versions of Claude on its own servers, and The Information reported in Apr 2026 that some Apple software teams hold large Claude Code budgets.
AppleCare is where Apple's AI reaches operations most directly: calls to 1-800-APL-CARE from the U.S. and Canada often reach a generative AI assistant (Aug 2026), and Bloomberg reported on Sep 29, 2026 that Apple had weighed cutting about 5,000 support roles in favor of AI phone and web agents before putting the plan on hold.
Craig Federighi, whose software organization took over Siri in Mar 2025, has also led Apple's foundation models, machine learning research and AI safety teams since John Giannandrea stepped down in Dec 2025, with former Google and Microsoft executive Amar Subramanya as VP of AI; John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as CEO on Sep 1, 2026.
Apple reports no internal AI usage, cost or return: R&D rose about 31% to $11.7 billion in the Jun 2026 quarter, and Tim Cook said on Jul 30, 2026 that Apple is spending quite a bit more on AI and runs a hybrid of its own data centers and some third-party cloud.
Where Apple sits
- Stage
- Experimenting
Apple has reported no business return it credits to AI, for any internal use case or for the company as a whole: the more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent App Store transactions Apple says it prevented in 2025 is credited to human review and machine learning together, and Tim Cook's Oct 2026 remark that machine learning has automated iPhone quality inspection came with no cost or headcount figure. Apple has also never said how many of its roughly 166,000 employees use AI tools; Enchanté, the Claude-based coding tools and the AppleCare phone assistant are known from press reports, not from Apple. Apple therefore stays at Experimenting, short of Piloting, which needs one AI-credited return or an officially reported rollout with a user count and a named owner.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- SVP Software Engineering Craig Federighi, with VP of AI Amar Subramanya
- Platform
- Hybrid: Enchanté and Enterprise Assistant built in-house; coding tools bought
- Models
- Apple Foundation Models with Anthropic Claude and Google Gemini, as reported
- Hosting
- Apple data centers and private servers; Google Cloud with Nvidia GPUs since Jun 2026; AWS for search inference
- Reach
- Not disclosed; Enchanté reported across office staff (Jan 2026)
How they deploy
Build the tools, mix the models
Apple built its own internal assistants, Enchanté and Enterprise Assistant, and trains its own Apple Foundation Models, but press reports show it bringing in outside models where they are stronger: Anthropic's Claude for coding since May 2025, and Claude and Google's Gemini as options inside Enchanté. Apple and Google said on Jan 12, 2026 that Apple's next-generation foundation models will be based on Gemini, and Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported that Apple first pursued a deal with Anthropic, which fell apart when Anthropic asked for several billion dollars a year.
Approved tools in place of open access
Apple barred staff from using ChatGPT and other outside generative AI tools for work in May 2023 and told employees to avoid GitHub Copilot, citing the risk of confidential data reaching outside servers, according to an internal memo seen by The Wall Street Journal. Enchanté follows the same line: Macworld reported in Jan 2026 that the app runs only Apple-approved models, locally or on private servers, and Mark Gurman said Apple runs custom versions of Claude on its own servers.
AI use as a company expectation
Tim Cook told an all-hands meeting on Aug 1, 2025 that Apple must use AI as a company or be left behind, and said 40% of the 12,000 people Apple hired in the previous year joined research and development (Bloomberg, via Spyglass). John Ternus, CEO since Sep 1, 2026, is reorganizing Apple to run faster and leaner, and Bloomberg reported that Apple weighed replacing about 5,000 AppleCare support roles with AI agents in the summer of 2026 before putting the plan on hold.
Own silicon first, outside clouds for capacity
Apple serves its own models from Private Cloud Compute servers built on Apple silicon in Apple's data centers, including servers it began shipping from a Houston factory in Oct 2025. Apple extended Private Cloud Compute to Nvidia GPUs in Google Cloud in Jun 2026 for its most demanding workloads, and Tim Cook said on Jul 30, 2026 that Apple runs a hybrid model of some third-party cloud and its own data centers.
Coding agents spread unevenly
Apple engineers began using an internal Xcode build with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet in May 2025. The Information reported in Apr 2026 that some teams in Apple's software engineering organization had allocated large Claude Code budgets, while fewer than 200 Siri engineers were being sent to a multi-week bootcamp on Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex because the Siri group lagged in using such tools. Apple added Claude Agent and Codex to Xcode 26.3 for all developers in Feb 2026.
- Deployment model
- Apple has announced no central office for internal AI. Craig Federighi's Software Engineering organization leads Apple's foundation models, applied AI and Siri, and Amar Subramanya's team builds the Apple Foundation Models that Macworld reported also power Enchanté and Enterprise Assistant. Each function deploys AI in its own tools: AppleCare, under COO Sabih Khan, runs an AI phone assistant and an AI chat assistant in the Apple Support app; Apple Store and sales partner staff use the Sales Coach chatbot; and the App Store's App Review and Trust and Safety teams use AI to flag fraud. Apple has not said which team built or runs Enchanté and Enterprise Assistant; Apple's information systems and technology group sits in Corporate Services under CFO Kevan Parekh.
- Model providers
- Apple trains its own Apple Foundation Models, which run on device and in Private Cloud Compute, and Apple and Google said on Jan 12, 2026 that the next generation will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology; Bloomberg reported in Nov 2025 that Apple would pay about $1 billion a year for a custom Gemini model. Inside Apple, Enchanté reportedly offers Apple Foundation Models, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini side by side, Enterprise Assistant runs only on Apple's own models, and engineers use Claude through an internal Xcode build and Claude Code, with OpenAI's Codex part of their AI coding training (Apr 2026). Apple trained its 2024 foundation models on Google Cloud TPU clusters, according to Apple's own technical paper.
- Data and infrastructure
- Apple runs Private Cloud Compute, its server platform for Apple Intelligence, on Apple silicon servers in its own data centers, and began shipping servers for it from a 250,000-square-foot Houston factory in Oct 2025 as part of a $600 billion U.S. investment commitment. Since Jun 8, 2026, Apple has also run its most demanding Apple Foundation Models workloads on Nvidia GPUs in Google Cloud, with Intel TDX CPUs and Google's Titan chip, under the same Private Cloud Compute requirements, in a preview ramping toward the full set of protections. Apple runs search inference on AWS Graviton and Inferentia chips (Dec 2024), and Tim Cook said in Jul 2026 that Apple uses some third-party cloud alongside its own data centers. Apple's internal tools stay on Apple infrastructure, according to press reports: Macworld said Enchanté's models run locally or on private servers, and Mark Gurman said Apple hosts custom versions of Claude on its own servers.
Platforms and internal tools
EnchantéNov 2025
Enchanté is an internal ChatGPT-style app, resembling the ChatGPT Mac app, that Apple employees reportedly use for ideas, development, proofreading and general questions; Enchanté accepts uploaded documents, images and files, draws on a database of Apple's internal documentation, and lets staff rate answers and compare Apple's models with outside ones side by side. An internal memo described Enchanté as both a test platform and a tool for everyday work, according to Macworld, which reported in Jan 2026 that the app runs only Apple-approved models, locally or on private servers.
- Users
- Not disclosed; reported across engineering, design, marketing and leadership
- Models
- Apple Foundation Models, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini (reported)
Enterprise AssistantBy Jan 2026
Enterprise Assistant is a knowledge hub for Apple's corporate employees that answers questions on conduct guidelines, health insurance, vacation policy, executive roles and technical setup such as configuring the VPN on an iPhone, with tools for staff to rate how accurate and useful each answer is. Enterprise Assistant is built entirely on Apple's own language models, according to Macworld (Jan 2026).
- Models
- Apple's own language models
AI coding tools for Apple engineersMay 2025
Apple began slowly rolling out an internal version of Xcode built with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet in May 2025, with a chat interface that writes code, tests user interfaces and helps engineers find and fix bugs, after Apple engineers found its own Swift Assist tool made things up (Bloomberg). The Information reported in Apr 2026 that some teams in Apple's software engineering organization had allocated large budgets for Claude Code.
- Models
- Anthropic Claude Sonnet and Claude Code; OpenAI Codex in engineer training
VeritasBy Sep 2025
Veritas is an internal iPhone chatbot app that Apple employees use to test the rebuilt Siri, including searching personal data such as emails and messages and taking actions inside apps such as editing photos, according to Bloomberg (Sep 2025). Apple built Veritas partly to learn whether a chatbot format has value and is not expected to release Veritas in its current form.
Ask for AppleCare advisersFeb 2024 (pilot)
Ask is a generative AI tool that lets AppleCare advisers paste or paraphrase a customer's technical question and get an answer drawn from Apple's internal knowledge base, rate it helpful or not, and ask up to five follow-up questions. Apple piloted Ask with a limited number of advisers from Feb 2024 and planned to widen it, according to MacRumors via 9to5Mac; Apple has not said whether Ask reached all advisers.
Sales CoachFeb 2026
Sales Coach is Apple's internal sales training app for Apple Store and Apple sales partner staff, launched on Feb 23, 2026 in place of the SEED app, with a chatbot in an Ask tab that answers product questions from Apple's official materials and documentation. Apple told retail staff in May 2026 that Sales Coach will add AI-generated video presenters that tailor training to each seller's products, skills and language.
- Users
- Apple Store and sales partner staff; count not disclosed
Private Cloud Compute
Private Cloud Compute is Apple's server platform for Apple Intelligence requests too large to handle on a device, originally built only on Apple silicon servers in Apple's data centers. Apple extended Private Cloud Compute to Nvidia GPUs in Google Cloud on Jun 8, 2026 for its most demanding workloads, such as agentic tool use and complex reasoning, under the same privacy requirements.
- Models
- Apple Foundation Models; the next generation built with Gemini technology
Vendors and partners
AnthropicBy May 2025
Claude in Apple's internal coding tools and, reportedly, in Enchanté · Mark Gurman of Bloomberg said in Jan 2026 that Apple runs custom versions of Claude on its own servers for product development and internal tools, and that Apple's talks on a Claude-based Siri fell apart over Anthropic's price of several billion dollars a year. Claude Agent became available to all developers in Xcode 26.3 in Feb 2026.
GoogleJan 2026
Gemini technology under Apple's next foundation models; Google Cloud hosts part of Private Cloud Compute · Apple and Google said on Jan 12, 2026 that the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Gemini models and cloud technology, and Alphabet's leaders called Google Apple's preferred cloud provider in Feb 2026. Apple trained its 2024 foundation models on Google Cloud TPU clusters, and Enchanté reportedly offers Gemini to Apple staff.
OpenAI2025
Codex coding agent in Xcode and in Apple's engineer training · Apple barred staff from using ChatGPT for work in May 2023; Xcode 26 added ChatGPT access for developers in 2025, Xcode 26.3 added OpenAI's Codex agent in Feb 2026, and The Information reported in Apr 2026 that Apple's bootcamp for Siri engineers covers Codex and Claude Code.
NvidiaJun 2026
GPUs with confidential computing for Private Cloud Compute on Google Cloud · Apple's Jun 8, 2026 security post says Private Cloud Compute on Google Cloud pairs Nvidia Confidential Computing GPUs with Intel TDX CPUs and Google's Titan chip.
Amazon Web ServicesBy Dec 2024
Cloud for search and other machine learning inference on Graviton and Inferentia chips · Benoit Dupin said at AWS re:Invent in Dec 2024 that moving to Graviton and Inferentia made Apple's machine learning inference workloads 40% more efficient than on x86 instances and that Apple was evaluating Trainium2 for pretraining; Apple has used AWS for years for iCloud and other services.
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
AI models and Siri in Software Engineering; each function deploys AI in its own tools; no central internal AI office announced
Apple's core AI work sits in Craig Federighi's Software Engineering organization, which took over Apple Foundation Models, machine learning research and AI safety and evaluation, under VP of AI Amar Subramanya, when John Giannandrea stepped down in Dec 2025; Siri moved to Federighi's organization under Mike Rockwell in Mar 2025. The rest of Giannandrea's former organization, which also covered search and knowledge and AI infrastructure, moved to COO Sabih Khan and Services chief Eddy Cue. Apple's functions deploy AI in their own tools, with AppleCare under Khan, Apple Store teams under Deirdre O'Brien and the App Store under Cue, and each of these executives reports to CEO John Ternus.
Apple has never disclosed how many people work on AI. Craig Federighi's Software Engineering organization holds Apple's core AI work: Amar Subramanya's foundation models, machine learning research and AI safety and evaluation teams, and Mike Rockwell's Siri group, which has hundreds of engineers (The Information, Apr 2026). COO Sabih Khan oversees AI data operations teams and AppleCare, and Eddy Cue's Services organization took on part of John Giannandrea's former AI group in Dec 2025. Tim Cook said in Aug 2025 that Apple had hired 12,000 people in the previous year, 40% of them in research and development.
Reporting lines
Chief Executive Officer
Software Engineering
Craig Federighi, SVP
Leads Apple's core AI efforts: foundation models, applied AI, the research behind Apple Intelligence and Siri (Apple leadership page, Oct 2026)
AI: Foundation Models, ML Research, AI Safety and Evaluation
Amar Subramanya, VP of AI
Created Dec 2025 from part of John Giannandrea's former organization
Siri
Mike Rockwell
Reported by Bloomberg in Mar 2025; not announced by Apple
Operations, AppleCare and AI data operations
Sabih Khan, COO
Took on part of John Giannandrea's former organization in Dec 2025; AppleCare runs the AI phone assistant and the Apple Support app assistant
Services and Health
Eddy Cue, SVP
Took on part of John Giannandrea's former organization in Dec 2025; includes the App Store, whose App Review uses AI
Retail + People
Deirdre O'Brien, SVP
Retail and online stores, Apple University and people support and technology; Apple Store staff use the Sales Coach chatbot
Finance and Corporate Services
Kevan Parekh, CFO
Corporate Services includes information systems and technology and information security
Apple's leadership pages, checked Oct 31, 2026, say Craig Federighi, Sabih Khan, Eddy Cue, Deirdre O'Brien and Kevan Parekh each report to CEO John Ternus, and Apple's Dec 2025 announcement says Amar Subramanya reports to Federighi. Mike Rockwell's Siri role comes from Bloomberg reporting, not an Apple announcement, and Apple has not published which team builds its internal AI tools.
Where the AI workforce sits
Foundation models, ML research, AI safety and evaluation
Amar Subramanya's organization in Software Engineering since Dec 2025.
Not disclosedSiri engineering
The Information, Apr 2026: of the fewer than 200 Siri engineers sent to an AI coding bootcamp, about 60 work on core Siri development and about 60 on evaluating Siri's performance and safety.
Hundreds of engineersAI data operations
Teams under COO Sabih Khan, according to Apple's leadership page (Oct 2026).
Not disclosedSearch, knowledge and AI infrastructure teams
Parts of John Giannandrea's former organization moved to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue in Dec 2025; Apple has not said which teams went where.
Not disclosed
Named people
Use cases
Apple has never said how many AI use cases it runs for its own operations; press reports, Apple's App Store report and Tim Cook's public remarks describe production use in software engineering, corporate knowledge work, AppleCare support, Apple Store retail, App Store fraud detection and iPhone quality inspection, with pilots at the Genius Bar and in the Apple Support app. Apple has published no business return for any internal AI use case and no firm-level return from AI: the $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent App Store transactions prevented in 2025 is credited to human review and AI together, and the AppleCare job cuts Bloomberg reported Apple had weighed were put on hold in Sep 2026.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enchanté employee assistant Enchanté gives Apple office staff a ChatGPT-style assistant for ideas, development, proofreading and general questions, with access to Apple's internal documentation and a choice of Apple, Claude and Gemini models, according to Macworld (Jan 2026). | Corporate functions | In production | |
| Enterprise Assistant Enterprise Assistant answers Apple corporate employees' questions on conduct guidelines, benefits, vacation policy, executive roles and IT setup, using only Apple's own language models. | Corporate functions | In production | |
| AI coding tools Apple engineers write, test and debug code with an internal Claude-based Xcode build rolled out from May 2025 and with Claude Code, for which some software teams hold large budgets (The Information, Apr 2026). | Software engineering | In production | |
| AI phone assistant on 1-800-APL-CARE Callers to Apple Support at 1-800-APL-CARE from the U.S. and Canada often reach a generative AI voice assistant that answers questions, gives step-by-step troubleshooting and transfers callers to a human adviser when it cannot help or when asked; MacRumors said in Aug 2026 that the assistant appeared to have gone live earlier in 2026. | AppleCare | In production | |
| Support Assistant in the Apple Support app The Ask tab in the Apple Support app answers questions about Apple devices and services, can run diagnostics on a device and escalates to support staff when it cannot solve a problem; Apple began testing it in Aug 2025 and dropped the Early Preview label in Feb 2026, but access remained limited. | AppleCare | Pilot | |
| Ask for AppleCare advisers Ask generates answers to customers' technical questions for AppleCare advisers from Apple's internal knowledge base; Apple piloted Ask with a limited number of advisers from Feb 2024 and has not said whether it reached all of them. | AppleCare | Pilot | |
| Sales Coach chatbot The Ask tab in Apple's Sales Coach app answers Apple Store and sales partner staff's product questions from Apple's official materials, such as the iPhone Air's key features or how Instant Hotspot works on a Mac. | Retail | In production | |
| AI-generated training presenters Apple told retail salespeople in May 2026 that Sales Coach will use AI-generated video presenters, labeled on screen, to deliver short training videos tailored to each seller's products, skills and language, with Apple's training team writing and checking every script. | Retail | Announced | |
| Live Notes at the Genius Bar Live Notes lets a Genius Bar employee record a conversation with a customer on an iPad, transcribe and summarize it, and attach the summary to the repair record; Apple is testing Live Notes at a limited number of Genius Bars, and both customer and employee must opt in (Bloomberg, Jul 2026). | Retail | Pilot | |
| App Review and fraud detection Apple's App Review combines human reviewers with AI that identifies malicious patterns and similar apps, and Apple's Trust and Safety teams use AI throughout moderation and AI-powered dashboards to find new fraud vectors; the App Store evaluated more than 9.1 million app submissions in 2025 (May 2026). | App Store | In production | |
| Machine learning in iPhone quality inspection Apple uses machine learning for all of the inspection and imaging work in iPhone color checks, keeping color consistent across millions of mass-produced devices; Tim Cook said on Oct 16, 2026 that machine learning has made quality inspection, once heavily manual, highly automated and more accurate. | Operations | In production |
Adoption
Apple has never published how many employees use AI. The public record shows Apple's internal adoption spreading in layers: an internal ChatGPT-style system built on Apple's Ajax framework and the Ask pilot for AppleCare advisers by Feb 2024, Claude-based coding tools for engineers from May 2025, Enchanté and Enterprise Assistant for office staff from Nov 2025, and AI in front-line work in 2026 through the Sales Coach chatbot for Apple Store and partner sales staff, the AppleCare phone assistant and the Live Notes pilot at the Genius Bar. Adoption at Apple is uneven: The Information reported in Apr 2026 that the Siri group lagged other Apple teams in using AI coding tools, while some software teams held large Claude Code budgets.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
May 2023
Apple restricted staff from using ChatGPT and other outside generative AI tools for work and told them to avoid GitHub Copilot, according to an internal memo seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Feb 2024
AppleCare began piloting Ask, a generative AI tool that answers advisers' technical questions from Apple's internal knowledge base, with a limited number of advisers; Apple already had an internal ChatGPT-style system built on its Ajax framework.
Dec 2024
Benoit Dupin, Apple's senior director of machine learning and AI, told AWS re:Invent that Apple runs search inference on AWS Graviton and Inferentia chips and was evaluating Trainium2 for pretraining.
Mar 2025
Apple moved Siri to Mike Rockwell, head of the Vision Products Group, reporting to software chief Craig Federighi, according to Bloomberg.
May 2025
Apple began slowly rolling out an internal Xcode build with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet to its engineers, according to Bloomberg.
Aug 2025
Tim Cook told an Apple all-hands meeting that the company must use AI as a company or be left behind, and that 40% of the 12,000 people hired in the previous year joined research and development.
Sep 2025
Bloomberg reported that Apple employees test the rebuilt Siri in Veritas, an internal chatbot app.
Oct 2025
Apple began shipping Private Cloud Compute servers from its Houston factory ahead of schedule, for installation in Apple's data centers.
Nov 2025
Apple rolled out Enchanté, an internal ChatGPT-style assistant, to employees, alongside Enterprise Assistant for policy questions, according to Macworld.
Dec 2025
John Giannandrea stepped down as Apple's head of machine learning and AI strategy; Amar Subramanya joined as vice president of AI under Craig Federighi, and the rest of the AI organization moved to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue.
Feb 2026
Apple launched Sales Coach with an AI chatbot for Apple Store and sales partner staff, and added Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex to Xcode 26.3 for all developers.
Apr 2026
Apple began sending fewer than 200 Siri engineers to a multi-week bootcamp on Claude Code and Codex, according to The Information.
Jun 2026
Apple extended Private Cloud Compute beyond its own data centers to Nvidia GPUs in Google Cloud.
Aug 2026
Calls to 1-800-APL-CARE from the U.S. and Canada were often reaching a generative AI assistant, which MacRumors said had gone live earlier in 2026.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology and R&D spending
Apple does not disclose a technology or AI budget. Apple's research and development expense rose 10% to $34.6 billion in fiscal 2025, driven mainly by headcount and infrastructure costs, and capital spending rose to $12.7 billion from $9.4 billion (2025 Form 10-K). In the quarter to Jun 27, 2026, Apple's R&D rose to $11.7 billion from $8.9 billion and operating expenses rose 23% to $19.1 billion, which CFO Kevan Parekh attributed to R&D investment.
What AI itself costs
Tim Cook said on Jul 30, 2026 that Apple has been growing operating expenses and spending quite a bit more on AI, and that some AI costs sit outside operating expenses, in cost of sales. Apple has not disclosed what it pays model providers; Bloomberg reported that Apple would pay Google about $1 billion a year for a custom Gemini model, and Mark Gurman said Anthropic had asked for several billion dollars a year for a Siri deal. Apple's spending on Claude Code and other internal AI tools is not public, though The Information reported in Apr 2026 that some Apple software teams had allocated large Claude Code budgets.
Reported ROI
Apple has published no business return from its internal use of AI: no savings, productivity figure or headcount effect credited to Enchanté, coding tools, AppleCare automation or retail tools. The closest Apple disclosure is its May 2026 App Store report, which says the App Store prevented more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025 through human review combined with AI and machine learning, without separating AI's share.
Headcount
Apple had about 166,000 full-time equivalent employees on Sep 27, 2025. Bloomberg reported on Sep 29, 2026 that Apple had weighed laying off about 5,000 AppleCare support staff because AI phone and web agents could take on some of their work, then put the plan on hold. Apple cut about 200 roles in Vision Pro and Siri teams in Aug 2026, with Siri engineering restructured around a new AI architecture, and several hardware engineering program managers, including about six directors, in Sep 2026.
Governance and risk
Outside AI tools
Apple restricted staff use of ChatGPT and other outside generative AI tools for work in May 2023 and told employees to avoid GitHub Copilot, citing the risk of confidential data reaching outside servers, according to an internal memo seen by The Wall Street Journal. Apple has not published its current policy; Macworld reported in Jan 2026 that Enchanté runs only models Apple has approved.
Private Cloud Compute requirements
Apple holds its server AI to five Private Cloud Compute requirements: stateless computation, enforceable guarantees, no privileged runtime access, non-targetability and verifiable transparency. When Apple extended Private Cloud Compute to Google Cloud in Jun 2026, it kept those requirements, committed to a cryptographically verifiable ledger of the Google Cloud hardware in its fleet, and said Apple devices trust only Private Cloud Compute software Apple has approved.
Training data and principles
Apple says it does not use users' private personal data or interactions to train its foundation models, trains them on licensed, curated and Applebot-crawled data, and honors robots.txt opt-outs (Jul 2025). Apple's published responsible AI principles cover giving users intelligent tools, representing users, designing with care and protecting privacy, and an AI Safety and Evaluation team reports to VP of AI Amar Subramanya (Dec 2025).
Employee data in retail AI tools
Apple's Live Notes pilot at the Genius Bar records a session only when both the customer and the employee opt in; Apple reportedly does not keep the recording, managers do not receive transcripts, and employees can edit the transcript and summary before saving (Bloomberg, Jul 2026). AI-generated presenters in Apple's Sales Coach training videos carry an on-screen label, and Apple says its training team writes and checks every script (May 2026).
AI in App Review
Apple says App Review has always combined human expertise with machine learning, and that AI now spots malicious patterns and similar apps so human reviewers can focus where their expertise matters most, while Apple's Trust and Safety teams use AI-powered dashboards to find new fraud vectors (May 2026).
Coding agents and code leaks
Apple's Support app version 5.13 shipped with two CLAUDE.md files, the project instruction files used by Anthropic's Claude Code, which a MacRumors contributor reported on Apr 30, 2026, and Apple then released version 5.13.1 without them. Apple has not described the controls it places on coding agents.
Disclosed risks
Apple's 2025 Form 10-K says AI features can raise safety risks, including harmful or inaccurate content, can increase the risk of inadvertent disclosure of personal data, may heighten intellectual property claims over training data and outputs, and bring new legal, regulatory and ethical considerations.
Recent signals
Oct 16, 2026
Tim Cook told the Global Wealth Management Forum in Shanghai that machine learning now does all of the inspection and imaging in iPhone color checks and that AI has had a profound impact on Apple's supply chain.
Sep 29, 2026
Bloomberg reported that Apple weighed laying off about 5,000 AppleCare support staff over the summer because AI phone and web agents could take on some of their work, then put the plan on hold, as CEO John Ternus pushes Apple to run faster and leaner.
Sep 1, 2026
John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as Apple's CEO, and Cook became executive chair of the board.
Aug 26, 2026
MacRumors reported that calls to Apple Support at 1-800-APL-CARE from the U.S. and Canada often reach a generative AI assistant that troubleshoots and hands callers to a human adviser when needed.
Aug 21, 2026
Apple cut about 200 roles in Vision Pro and Siri teams, restructuring Siri engineering around its new AI architecture, Bloomberg reported; Apple said it was realigning some of its teams.
Jul 30, 2026
Tim Cook said on his last earnings call as CEO that Apple is spending quite a bit more on AI and runs a hybrid model of some third-party cloud and its own data centers; Apple's R&D rose to $11.7 billion in the quarter from $8.9 billion.
Jul 19, 2026
Bloomberg reported that Apple is piloting Live Notes, which records, transcribes and summarizes Genius Bar conversations into repair records when both customer and employee opt in.
Jun 8, 2026
Apple extended Private Cloud Compute to Nvidia GPUs in Google Cloud for its most demanding Apple Foundation Models workloads, the first time Private Cloud Compute has run outside Apple's data centers.
May 20, 2026
Apple said the App Store prevented more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025, using human review combined with AI and machine learning.
May 12, 2026
Apple told retail staff that its Sales Coach training app will use AI-generated video presenters, labeled on screen, with scripts written and checked by Apple's training team.
Apr 30, 2026
Apple's Support app version 5.13 shipped with two CLAUDE.md files, the instruction files used by Anthropic's Claude Code, and Apple released version 5.13.1 to remove them, according to posts by a MacRumors contributor.
Apr 15, 2026
The Information reported that Apple is sending fewer than 200 Siri engineers to a multi-week bootcamp on Claude Code and Codex, and that some Apple software teams have allocated large Claude Code budgets.
Feb 4, 2026
Alphabet's leaders said Google is Apple's preferred cloud provider for the next generation of Apple Foundation Models, which Apple and Google said on Jan 12, 2026 will be based on Gemini.
Jan 30, 2026
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg said Apple runs on Anthropic, with custom versions of Claude on Apple's own servers powering much of its product development and internal tools.
Jan 21, 2026
Macworld reported that Apple employees use Enchanté, an internal assistant with Apple, Claude and Gemini models, and Enterprise Assistant, a policy chatbot built on Apple's own models.
Quick answers
- How does Apple deploy AI?
- Apple deploys AI internally through Enchanté, an internal assistant reportedly rolled out in Nov 2025 that offers Apple Foundation Models alongside Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, plus Claude-based coding tools for engineers and a generative AI assistant that answers AppleCare calls. Apple has confirmed none of these tools publicly and has never said how many employees use AI or what it returns. Software chief Craig Federighi has led Apple's AI models since Dec 2025 and reports to John Ternus, CEO since Sep 1, 2026.
- What does Apple use AI for?
- Apple has never said how many AI use cases it runs for its own operations; press reports, Apple's App Store report and Tim Cook's public remarks describe production use in software engineering, corporate knowledge work, AppleCare support, Apple Store retail, App Store fraud detection and iPhone quality inspection, with pilots at the Genius Bar and in the Apple Support app. Apple has published no business return for any internal AI use case and no firm-level return from AI: the $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent App Store transactions prevented in 2025 is credited to human review and AI together, and the AppleCare job cuts Bloomberg reported Apple had weighed were put on hold in Sep 2026.
- Who leads AI at Apple?
- AI at Apple is led by Craig Federighi (Senior Vice President, Software Engineering); Amar Subramanya (Vice President of AI); Mike Rockwell (Vice President, leads Siri). Ownership of AI on the org chart: SVP Software Engineering Craig Federighi, with VP of AI Amar Subramanya.
- What AI platform does Apple use?
- Enchanté is an internal ChatGPT-style assistant Apple reportedly rolled out to office staff from Nov 2025, and Enterprise Assistant answers policy and IT questions; Apple has not announced either tool (Macworld, Jan 2026).
- Which AI models does Apple use?
- Enchanté reportedly offers Apple Foundation Models, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, Apple engineers use Claude-based coding tools, and Apple's next foundation models are built on Gemini technology (Jun 2026).
- How many Apple employees use AI?
- Apple has never said how many of its roughly 166,000 employees use AI; Macworld reported Enchanté in use across engineering, design, marketing and leadership in Jan 2026.
- How far has AI spread at Apple?
- Apple has reported no business return it credits to AI, for any internal use case or for the company as a whole: the more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent App Store transactions Apple says it prevented in 2025 is credited to human review and machine learning together, and Tim Cook's Oct 2026 remark that machine learning has automated iPhone quality inspection came with no cost or headcount figure. Apple has also never said how many of its roughly 166,000 employees use AI tools; Enchanté, the Claude-based coding tools and the AppleCare phone assistant are known from press reports, not from Apple. Apple therefore stays at Experimenting, short of Piloting, which needs one AI-credited return or an officially reported rollout with a user count and a named owner.
Open questions
- How many Apple employees can use Enchanté and how many use it each week, and does Enchanté reach Apple Store and AppleCare staff as well as office workers?
- Which Apple team built and runs Enchanté and Enterprise Assistant: Craig Federighi's AI organization, or information systems and technology under CFO Kevan Parekh?
- Do the Claude and Gemini models in Enchanté run on Apple's own servers, as Mark Gurman reported for Claude, or in the providers' clouds, given Macworld's description of an app with no connection to third parties?
- What is Apple's current policy on outside AI tools for staff, given that the May 2023 restriction on ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot is the last one reported?
- What does Apple spend on AI, including model providers, Claude Code and other coding tools, and the Gemini model Bloomberg put at about $1 billion a year?
- What business return do Apple's internal AI tools deliver, such as cost per AppleCare contact, calls and chats resolved by the AI assistants, or engineering output from coding agents? Apple has published none.
- Will Apple revisit the plan Bloomberg reported to replace about 5,000 AppleCare support roles with AI agents, and has AI already slowed AppleCare hiring?
- Which teams from John Giannandrea's former organization moved to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue in Dec 2025, and who now leads Apple's AI infrastructure?
- How many AI and machine learning specialists does Apple employ? Apple has never disclosed a figure.
- What controls govern coding agents in Apple's codebase after a MacRumors contributor reported Claude Code instruction files inside the Apple Support app in Apr 2026?
- Will Apple expand Live Notes beyond the Genius Bar pilot, and under what rules for recordings, transcripts and performance reviews?
- Which vendor, if any, built Apple's AppleCare phone assistant, and does it run on Apple Foundation Models?
Sources
Apple
- Apple leadership (checked Oct 31, 2026)
- John Ternus, CEO, biography
- Tim Cook, Executive Chair, biography
- Craig Federighi, SVP Software Engineering, biography
- Sabih Khan, COO, biography
- Eddy Cue, SVP Services and Health, biography
- Deirdre O'Brien, SVP Retail + People, biography
- Kevan Parekh, CFO, biography
- Apple Newsroom: Tim Cook to become executive chairman, John Ternus to become CEO (Apr 20, 2026)
- Apple Newsroom: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple (Dec 1, 2025)
- Apple Newsroom: Apple announces chief operating officer transition (Jul 8, 2025)
- Apple Newsroom: The App Store stopped over $2.2 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2025 (May 20, 2026)
- Apple Security Research: Expanding Private Cloud Compute (Jun 8, 2026)
- Apple Machine Learning Research: Apple Foundation Models 2025 updates (Jun 2025, updated Jul 2025)
Filings and investor materials
News
- Macworld: Inside Enchanté, Apple's AI chatbot for employee productivity (Jan 21, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple employees using Enchanté internal AI chatbot (Jan 21, 2026)
- 9to5Mac: Apple runs on Anthropic, says Mark Gurman (Jan 30, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple partners with Anthropic for Claude-powered coding platform (May 2, 2025)
- 9to5Mac: Apple to send Siri engineers to multi-week AI coding bootcamp (Apr 15, 2026)
- 9to5Mac: Agentic coding in Xcode with Claude Agent and Codex (Feb 3, 2026)
- mjtsai.com: Claude at Apple, CLAUDE.md files in the Apple Support app (May 1, 2026)
- MacRumors: 1-800-APL-CARE now connects callers with an AI assistant (Aug 26, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple reportedly planned to replace 5,000 support employees with AI (Sep 29, 2026)
- 9to5Mac: John Ternus wants to reshape Apple (Sep 29, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple Support app AI assistant gets an Ask tab (Feb 3, 2026)
- 9to5Mac: AppleCare advisers test the Ask AI tool (Feb 23, 2024)
- 9to5Mac: Apple's Sales Coach app is live, replacing SEED (Feb 23, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple launching new Sales Coach app (Feb 13, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple Sales Coach will use AI-generated video presenters (May 12, 2026)
- Macworld: Apple is reportedly testing AI tools for Genius Bar appointments (Jul 20, 2026)
- Engadget: Apple built a chatbot app to test Siri's new capabilities (Sep 26, 2025)
- 9to5Mac: Apple restricts employees from using ChatGPT (May 18, 2023)
- Spyglass: Apple backed into an AI corner, on Tim Cook's all-hands meeting (Aug 1, 2025)
- 9to5Mac: Apple COO on the accelerated timeline for Houston-built AI servers (Oct 23, 2025)
- Computerworld: Apple shops at Amazon for Apple Intelligence services (Dec 5, 2024)
- CNBC via NBC Chicago: Apple says its AI models were trained on Google's custom chips (Jul 29, 2024)
- 9to5Mac: Google suggests Gemini-powered Siri will run on Google's servers (Feb 4, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple's Siri chatbot may run on Google servers (Jan 22, 2026)
- MacRumors: Apple's private AI will run on Google's servers (Jun 8, 2026)
- 9to5Mac: Apple confirms Gemini-powered Siri will use Private Cloud Compute (Jan 29, 2026)
- iPhone in Canada: Apple restructures Siri and Vision Pro teams, eliminating 200 jobs (Aug 21, 2026)
- Bloomberg via Gulf News: Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell named Siri head (Mar 2025)
- Cailian Press: Tim Cook on AI's effect on the supply chain, Global Wealth Management Forum, Shanghai (Oct 16, 2026, in Chinese)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Apple profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Oct 31, 2026
