In brief
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it was "fucking annoying" that his comments about computer memory were taken out of context, after Elon Musk mocked them.
- Altman had said it was "quite terrible" for the world's limited supply of DRAM to sit in home computers that are used 5% of the time.
- He briefly renamed himself "Ram Altman" on X, saying he wants people to be able to put as much memory in their computers as they want.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit back at criticism of his comments about computer memory, saying they were taken out of context and that he has long argued for the world to make more of it.
"I actually do want the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers, and it is fucking annoying that this was taken out of context," Altman tweeted early Wednesday. "I have been arguing for the world to ramp up memory production for a long time."
but only because...i actually do want the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers, and it is fucking annoying that this was taken out of context.
i have been arguing for the world to ramp up memory production for a long time.
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 4, 2026
The post came as Altman leaned into the backlash. Replying to users joking about his remarks, he said he "lol'd" at one meme and, when another asked him to rename his X account "Ram Altman," replied "ok yeah," briefly changing his display name before explaining he had only done so because he wanted people to have plenty of memory.
Altman's original comments came in an interview with YouTube channel Cheeky Pint, where he discussed shortages of memory and other components caused by the AI boom. "From like 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 and being used 5% of the time," he said. "You want maximum utilization in a cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment."
In the same interview, Altman also blamed memory makers for being slow to expand production, and said he would be "very sad" if prices for chips and other components did not fall.
The remarks drew widespread criticism, including from Elon Musk, who mocked Altman on Sunday with a meme of the Inglourious Basterds character Hans Landa asking, "You are withholding DRAM from the cloud, are you not?" "The people deserve to have their RAM too!" Musk wrote.
The global RAM shortage
The spat comes amid a global memory shortage driven by demand from AI data centers. SK hynix, one of the world's largest memory makers, warned last week that demand for memory would outstrip supply through 2030.
Contract prices for 16GB DDR5 memory chips rose from $8.70 in October 2025 to $48 in September 2026, an increase of more than 550%, according to Tom's Hardware. On an earnings call this week, Chen Ching-wen, CEO of memory maker Team Group, said there was "no downward price trend whatsoever," and warned that some buyers could face a situation where "even money can't buy goods."
The crunch has already pushed up prices for consumer devices. In April, Meta raised the price of its Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets by $50 to $100, weeks after Sony increased PlayStation 5 prices.