Altman calls PC DRAM a 'quite terrible' use of supply

Sam Altman told the Cheeky Pint podcast that it is "quite terrible" for the world's limited DRAM supply to sit in home computers, as covered by The Verge. The OpenAI chief argued memory used "maybe 5% of the time" on a desktop would deliver more value if it were running continuously in a data center.

"From a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer," Altman said. He added: "You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply constrained environment." The remarks came in response to the pitch for local AI inference on open-source models, which he framed as a misallocation given global memory constraints.

The comments landed badly in enthusiast circles already watching DRAM prices climb. The Verge's Tom Warren posted the clip on X with the line, "These people don't want you to own powerful computers anymore, they want you to rent them." Two of the AI commentators in our Who's Who directory passed the link around the same day. Altman did not, in the exchange as reported, name a memory supplier or disclose OpenAI's own share of the squeeze.