OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks installing RAM in gaming PCs is "pretty terrible"
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks it's "terrible" that people put RAM in their computers instead of data centers, as the AI boom causes memory shortages and rising costs.
In an interview with YouTuber Cheeky Pint, Altman discussed the global supply of computing resources currently facing the AI industry. When the conversation inevitably turned to memory, Altman claimed that the market's "invisible hand" is failing—likely because not all DRAM wafers can flow directly into data centers to run these AI models.
"From a global resource allocation perspective, having everyone leave the world's limited DRAM sitting idle in their own computers at maybe 5% utilization is actually pretty terrible," Altman said. "In a cloud environment, if resources are this tight, you should maximize utilization as much as possible. But somehow, many people's intuition is exactly the opposite."
From Altman's perspective, this seems reasonable. OpenAI's best interest lies in accessing as many hyperscale data centers as possible to maximize the speed of running its massive AI models. However, while Altman seems to think people are buying memory just to run local AI models, virtually all consumer electronics need RAM—which is why gaming hardware prices have risen across the board this year.
Just this month, used PS5 Pro prices soared to $1,399 after the console received an official price increase in March due to the memory shortage. Meanwhile, RTX 5080 graphics cards also disappeared from Nvidia's market weeks after the RTX 5090 was nearly discontinued.
However, for Altman, who firmly believes cloud AI models are the future of computing, he likely views all these consumer memory shortages as a means of ensuring more memory flows to AI companies to fill data centers. And according to Samsung's latest earnings call, that's exactly what's happening—which is why the memory shortage won't improve next year.
Looking at the timeline, expanding memory production isn't something that can be solved in a quarter or two—by the time new fabs come online, it could be 2027. In the meantime, gamers and ordinary consumers are essentially footing the bill for peak data center demand, and with secondhand hardware prices pushed higher, upgrade cycles will only stretch out further. In the end, it won't just affect gaming—the costs of office work and content creation will rise along with it.