AI demand may keep memory prices high to 2030

Anyone holding out for a return to cheap RAM may be waiting a long while. TechRadar reports that SK Hynix, one of the world's largest memory manufacturers, has predicted the current supply shortage could last until the end of the decade, a forecast that lands as AI companies absorb an ever-larger share of global memory output.

The piece, written by TechRadar senior security writer Benedict Collins, traces the shortage back to a mix of AI datacenter demand and a production pullback by memory makers in the years before the crunch — and it argues that newer industries, robotics among them, could tighten the squeeze further.

Altman's DRAM allocation argument

The story opens on comments attributed to OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who has argued that consumers do not deserve DRAM because, in his framing, it is used only "5% of the time." Under that logic, memory supplies should go first to datacenters, where the same DRAM can serve many users through cloud environments rather than sit idle in personal machines.

TechRadar characterizes Altman's position as a utilitarian argument: that short-term pain for consumers, in the form of handing over available DRAM, would produce a better outcome in a world running on AI tools that save time and raise productivity. The article notes that this framing is more appealing to the head of an AI company than to someone who simply wants affordable memory again.

The piece also points out that the shortage is partly tied to a buildout Altman's company set in motion. According to TechRadar, when OpenAI's Stargate datacenter project was announced in early 2025, it was predicted the project would require 40% of the world's global supply. The article adds that supply problems were compounded because leading memory producers had entered a production turndown a few years earlier in an effort to stabilize pricing.

The 5% claim and its critics

The "5% of the time" figure is the flashpoint of the debate as TechRadar frames it. It is presented as Altman's own characterization of consumer DRAM utilization, not as an independently verified measurement, and the article does not cite a source for the number beyond attributing it to him.

Read in context, the argument is about where a scarce resource should be directed, not about whether consumers need memory at all. The article's description of Altman's view is that DRAM allocated to datacenters can be shared across cloud workloads, while DRAM in a personal computer is used intermittently.

TechRadar's response is not to dispute the utilization figure directly but to note the practical consequence: under current supply constraints, the question of who gets memory is decided by purchasing power and production planning, not by a moral argument about utility.

No, Altman is not coming for your RAM

The article leavens the policy debate with a lighter section drawn from a Reddit thread in the r/ChatGPT community, where a user posed the question that had apparently been on many minds: "Is Sam Altman going to break into my house and steal my RAM?"

According to TechRadar, Google's AI gave a reassuring answer: "No, Sam Altman is not going to break into your house to physically steal your RAM." The article's own conclusion is that there is little the OpenAI chief can personally do to take memory out of individual machines, while cautioning that other pressures could still make the shortage worse.

That framing matters because it separates two different questions that tend to get merged in online discussion — whether a specific executive has any mechanism to seize consumer hardware (he does not), and whether the broader market for memory is tilting away from consumers (which the article argues it is).

SK Hynix's forecast through 2030

The centerpiece of the shortage discussion is SK Hynix's forecast. TechRadar reports that the manufacturer predicted that the supply shortage could “persist through 2030,” which the article says makes any hope of a return to affordable pricing in the next few years a distant prospect.

SK Hynix is described as one of the world's leading memory manufacturers. TechRadar also notes that the memory giants controlling around 90% of the world's supply face a lot of uncertainty over how they will shift production, particularly with OpenAI and Anthropic both set to hit the public market within that window.

On the article's account, the revenue gap between the consumer memory market and the AI market makes a significant production swing toward the high-bandwidth memory used for AI inference and training unsurprising. That is a description of incentives, not a report of a specific announced production decision by any manufacturer.

Demand erosion from AI hiring freezes

TechRadar raises a second-order effect that is easy to miss: AI's impact on employment could reduce consumer demand for memory at the same time that AI datacenters are pulling supply away.

The article points to numerous firms enacting hiring freezes as AI strategies help cut out repetitive rote work. In its telling, higher unemployment and a lack of open positions could further reduce demand for consumer memory, which in turn would push production further in favor of AI.

The chain is presented as a possibility rather than a documented trend — the article says this "could" compound the shortage, not that it has already done so at measurable scale. It does not cite specific unemployment figures or name the firms imposing freezes.

Robots and autonomous vehicles want memory too

Beyond AI datacenters, TechRadar flags robotics and autonomous vehicles as emerging consumers of memory. The article describes a recent expansion in the robotics industry, citing humanoid bots competing in their very own Olympics and warehouses staffed by fleets of micro-bots as examples.

As AI improves and converges with robotics to produce machines with near-human fine motor control, the article suggests industries spanning manufacturing, hospitality and logistics could buy robots in place of human workers. It lists the familiar advantages a machine has over a person — round-the-clock operation, no need to rest — alongside the observation that a robot has no rights to be violated through unsafe conditions or excessive hours. The same reasoning is extended to autonomous taxis and cargo trucks.

All of those systems need memory to run what the article calls their "little AI brains." TechRadar's assessment is that serving corporate buyers is more important and more profitable than expanding memory production for the consumer market, and it advises against expecting things to improve soon.

The numbers behind the crunch

Stripped of the argument, the article's quantitative claims are few and specific:

• 5% — Altman's stated figure for how often consumer DRAM is utilized, the basis of his allocation argument
• 40% of the world's global supply — the predicted memory requirement for OpenAI's Stargate datacenter buildout announced in early 2025
• 2030 — the year through which SK Hynix predicted the supply shortage could persist
• around 90% — the share of the world's memory supply controlled by the leading memory manufacturers

Those four figures carry the article's case. Everything else in the piece is characterization, analogy or inference from them, and the 2030 forecast in particular is attributed to SK Hynix rather than presented as an independent projection.

What readers can take from the forecast

For anyone planning a PC build, a laptop purchase or an infrastructure refresh, the practical reading of the TechRadar piece is that the current pricing environment may not correct on the schedule buyers are used to. The article's own framing is that hopes of affordable pricing in the next few years are, in its words, a distant dream.

That is an inference drawn from SK Hynix's forecast and the incentives described in the article, not a promise about any specific product's price. The piece does not offer a timeline for relief beyond 2030, and it does not put a figure on how much memory prices might rise or fall.

What it does argue, consistently, is that the direction of production is being set by buyers with deeper pockets than individual consumers — datacenter operators first, and potentially robotics and autonomous vehicle fleets after them. Whether that holds for the full run to 2030 depends on decisions by the manufacturers who control the vast majority of supply, decisions the article says remain uncertain.