OpenAI's DRAM Spree Squeezes Memory Chip Supply

Memory chips are getting scarce, and Sam Altman has a theory about who's hoarding them wrong. OpenAI has spent the past year buying up DRAM at a pace that's rattled the rest of the tech industry, with executives at Micron and SK Hynix pointing to the company's data center build-out as a reason chip prices keep climbing. That scarcity is starting to show up everywhere, from gaming rigs to the RAM sitting inside your laptop.

Altman addressed the shortage directly during an appearance on the Cheeky Pint podcast, where he also weighed in on how AI is changing math. The question put to him was straightforward: why does OpenAI need so much RAM, and what does that mean for everyone else competing for the same limited supply? His answer cuts against a common assumption in tech circles, the idea that open-source models running locally on personal hardware will ease the pressure on data centers. Altman argued the opposite is true, and that the logic people use to justify keeping memory on their own machines gets the whole allocation problem backwards.