Sam Altman says it’s better for RAM to be in a data center than on your desk

<figure> <img alt="" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/gettyimages-1778705436.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" /> <figcaption> </figcaption> </figure> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Asked about supply chain shortages, like the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/839353/pc-ram-shortage-pricing-spike-news">ongoing RAM shortage</a>, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview that it's "terrible" to have RAM in personal PCs instead of data centers. During his appearance on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMsUcCYNKqY&amp;t=1747s"><em>Cheeky Pint</em></a> podcast, where he also <a href="https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1023054/altman-cheeky-pint-ai-math-interview">commented on AI's impact on math</a>, Altman said:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">"A lot of people want local inference. And somehow, they assume that the problem is solved now because we are going to have open-source models, we're going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we're not going to need all the stuff in the data center.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">But from a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybo …</p></blockquote> <p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1023820/sam-altman-ram-shortage-cloud-servers">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>