REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc and Facebook Inc will help pay for female employees to freeze their eggs, signaling a willingness to spend on perks and benefits in a race to acquire top-flight talent.

From January, Apple will pay both full- and part-time employees up to 20,000 USD for procedure and storage costs for female employees to freeze their eggs.

"We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cryopreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatments," Apple said in a statement. "We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families."

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Facebook recently began covering egg-freezing for non-medical reasons, making it one of the first major employers in the technology sector to do so. A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that the company rolled out the benefit in January in response to requests from employees, among other reasons.