Sam Altman made headlines over the weekend by ruffling the feathers of the very consumer market he's already been pissing off for the last year: PC gamers. In an interview, the CEO of OpenAI seemed to be pleading for sympathy as he said it was "quite terrible" that RAM for gaming exists, and suggested that we as humans should all be for funneling more supply toward training AI models in data centers.
For full context, Altman said: "From a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAMs sitting in their own computer and being used 5% of the time.
"Like, you want maximum utilization in a cloud if you're trying to deal with a very supply-constrained environment," he said.
Sam Altman says RAM in personal computers is wasting the world's limited DRAM supply that could be better allocated to data centers...from r/myclaw
I've been covering this year's global RAM shortages from the get-go, so as you can imagine, I have some thoughts. But perhaps more alarming than anything is the fact that Altman, one of the foremost names in AI and tech, seems to suggests that consumers who buy and install RAM in their personal computers are only making use of it 5% of the time? I don't know how many gaming PCs he's tried to build, but if he's only used RAM in 5% of them, I don't think he'll have been very successful.
Now, to be as fair as I can be, I'm sure he wasn't talking about active PC gamers like you and me. It's far more likely he was talking about inactive computers or older ones that aren't in use anymore but still have RAM in them that data centers could make use of. Either way, what a bold and dangerously inaccurate statement for someone in his position to make, especially considering how much of the global tech market his company's relentless development of AI has disrupted in 2026.
In case you don't know, there's a global RAM and storage shortage going on right now, specifically because of AI companies building data centers and training their models, all of which need a ridiculous amount of compute in order to learn. For example, Samsung is one of the three biggest manufacturers of RAM on planet Earth, and it signed a supply deal with Altman's company late last year to supply OpenAI with 900,000 DRAM/HBM wafers per month - which counts as roughly 40% of the entire world's RAM manufacturing output. Only yesterday, it was reported by Tom's Hardware that Altman has negotiated a further deal with Samsung amidst RAM shortages.
Remember too, that this is only one of the big AI companies we're talking about here. Anthropic, Google, Meta, XAI, and more will all need their own massive stores of RAM as well.
And yet, in his viral interview from a few days ago, Altman seemed to think it's terrible that we as consumers are stealing up the world's supply of RAM - interesting. Especially when, only last month, IDC reported that PC hardware shipments fell 20.1% in Q3 2026.
From where I'm sat, Altman's thoughts only go to show just how out of touch AI companies are with the ways consumers use technology.
Anyone investing enough money in a gaming PC to buy RAM right now is going to put it to very good use - especially when they'll likely settle for less of it than they planned because of budget constraints. As someone who isn't a fan of AI in the slightest, Altman's flippant attitudes certainly support the argument that most AI companies have an insular, full-steam-ahead attitude to development that doesn't consider the consequences of doing so.
Is Altman suggesting that we build gaming PCs just to leave them sitting idle most of the time? Is he suggesting that RAM isn't used in most computing tasks, because that couldn't be further from the truth. Try booting a PC without memory and let me know how you get on.
Is Altman asking us to donate our RAM and go without any sort of personal computing until AI Jesus has been born anew, ready to atone for our sins?
The prices of PC hardware have gone through the roof this year, leaving entire companies and segments of the market in a scramble. That's forgetting the even worse issues of massive pollution that's happening due to AI data centers. Or, indeed, the unfathomable amounts of water being used to cool them, or the potential risks to humanity from unchecked and unregulated AI arms races. It's no real surprise that Altman doesn't consider all of those things, but you'd expect the CEO of a massive tech company like Altman to be wise to the impacts AI training is having on consumer markets.
The global RAM shortage is set to continue for at least a few years yet, and even if it doesn't, RAM companies are already finding ways to secure profits for themselves long after a supply shortage is done. Micron has signed agreements with some of its clients that all but secure this year's pricing until at least 2030. VRAM, used in the best graphics cards, is now so expensive that there are questions around whether Nvidia and AMD will even launch a new generation in 2027, and prices on existing cards are going through the roof.
The reason for all of that isn't that consumers are buying up so much RAM supply that there's now massive inflation and shortages. AI companies are to blame, so next time you use that RAM in your laptop or computer, take joy in the fact you're keeping it from them.
For more, take a look at the best gaming PCs, the best CPU for gaming, and the best computer speakers.
