Sam Altman says he wants more RAM for everyone after podcast remarks

What happened

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spent election night pushing back on criticism of earlier remarks he made about memory in personal computers, The Verge reported. Responding to a comment from another user on X, he switched his display name to Ram Altman and said he does want people everywhere to have abundant memory and to fit their machines with as much of it as they like.

Altman wrote that he was frustrated his earlier comments had been stripped of context, adding that he has spent a long time urging the world to expand memory manufacturing. In a separate reply to another user, he said he wants people to have plenty of RAM and called for more of it to be built.

The posts followed Altman's appearance on the Cheeky Pint podcast, where he described it as quite bad that a portion of the world's scarce DRAM supply sits inside individual computers that are used only about five percent of the time. The remarks landed amid shortages that are already making memory harder and more expensive for many buyers to obtain.

Context

AI data centers have been absorbing a large share of the global RAM supply, creating shortages that have pushed up prices across tech products. The squeeze may not ease soon: Intel expects it to continue through at least next year, while SK Hynix has forecast that it could persist until 2030.