Altman Says Keeping DRAM in Personal Computers Is a 'Quite Terrible' Use of Scarce Memory

Altman spoke on the Cheeky Pint podcast, which is produced by payments company Stripe. "It's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer," he said, according to Notebookcheck. He added: "You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment."

His argument is that memory in consumer devices sits idle much of the time, while servers in shared data centres can keep it busy. That would favour AI models run by providers in the cloud over models run locally on users' own machines.

Critics Point to a Conflict

The comments were widely covered by technology outlets including PC Gamer, Notebookcheck and Windows Central, and much of the coverage was critical. Notebookcheck noted that the position fits OpenAI's business model, which rests on closed models run in data centres and sold through subscriptions and cloud services. It also said the argument overlooks the other work that RAM does in a PC, such as gaming, everyday applications and multitasking.

The Market Backdrop

The debate comes as memory makers steer supply towards AI customers. Nikkei reported this week that memory chip prices have doubled as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron prioritise data centre buyers and lock in multi-year contracts, leaving makers of PCs and phones to absorb higher costs. Notebookcheck said this shift in demand is putting pressure on the consumer market and pushing up hardware prices.

For executives planning device purchases or local AI deployments, Altman's remarks show how the companies building the largest AI systems view the competition for memory. Running models locally and running them in the cloud now draw on the same constrained supply.