Sam Altman RAM shortage meme
The gist
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it is "quite terrible" people keep DRAM in their PCs used 5 per cent of the time.
Elon Musk's meme reply turned a memory-chip shortage into a public fight over who gets RAM.
How it unfolded
- Oct 31, 2026On the Cheeky Pint podcast, Altman calls it "quite terrible" that people have "a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer" used about 5 per cent of the time, and says "you want maximum utilisation in the cloud."
- Oct 31, 2026His remarks draw criticism from PC enthusiasts and consumers online, including a Reddit thread packed with pushback against AI, data centers and the RAM shortage.
- Nov 1, 2026Elon Musk posts on X, "The people deserve to have their RAM too!", with a meme from the opening scene of the film Inglourious Basterds showing an SS officer saying, "You are withholding DRAM from the cloud, are you not?"