Sam Altman thinks it’s ‘quite terrible’ for your PC to be using memory that AI companies need so badly

Among the many impacts the AI industry has had on the world in the last several years, the ongoing memory shortage is one of the biggest. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and other tech giants are gobbling up the world’s memory supply to power their data centers, sending prices for consumer electronics skyrocketing. Given that context, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks it’s “quite terrible” that you have memory sitting in your computer that AI companies could be using instead.

Altman’s comments came in a recent interview with Stripe cofounder John Collison, where he discussed the surge in interest in running open-source AI models on local hardware (like your own PC) rather than relying on big AI companies to handle the processing in the cloud. “From, like, a global allocation perspective, actually it’s quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their computer and being used 5% of the time,” Altman said. “Like, you want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment.”

Altman’s comments have not gone over well online. “He sees anyone owning something for their own personal use as a resource that he’s being denied,” one Reddit user said on the website’s r/Technology board. “Sam Altman is [mad] at resources being used by other people for their own use instead of being used to make him richer,” another added. That sentiment carried through most of the comments throughout the thread.

Even Elon Musk got in on the mocking with an X post in which he declared, “The people deserve to have their RAM too!.”

The reason for the backlash is simple: memory (or RAM) is integral to every piece of consumer electronics you own. Everything from your computer to your smartphone, smart thermostat, car, game console and TV relies on memory to work. Modern gadgets simply wouldn’t work without it, which is why the current shortage — driven by AI companies eating into the global supply — has driven prices for nearly all consumer tech higher.

We’ve seen this hit game consoles particularly hard this year. In April, Sony significantly raised prices across the PlayStation 5 lineup, bringing the most affordable model to $600 – up from $400 at launch in 2020. Nintendo and Xbox both followed up with price hikes of their own. PC manufacturers have been heavily impacted as well, with RAM prices climbing more than 500% over 12 months. PC sales have plummeted as a result, falling more than 21% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026.

The memory price surge shows no signs of slowing either. SK Hynix, a South Korean company that ranks as the world’s second-largest memory manufacturer, recently said it expects shortages to last through 2030. It added that more than half of its production is already booked for the next two years.

AI companies are also under increasing pressure to demonstrate profitability as they prepare to go public. OpenAI is reportedly seeking a $1.25 trillion valuation, though it posted a net loss of $38.5 billion for 2025. Anthropic, largely viewed as OpenAI’s largest competitor, recently filed paperwork to prepare to go public, revealing huge spending commitments and operating losses.