Tim Cook isn’t the only CEO shocked by the soaring cost of memory. Elon Musk said he’s never seen anything like it.
The Tesla CEO posted a quote on X from the Apple CEO, who earlier this month had said the memory shortage is “a hundred-year flood” and that he’d “never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.”
Musk said he agreed with Cook. He wrote on Thursday that it’s the “biggest price jump in anything I’ve ever seen.”
The soaring demand for chips, which are widely used in consumer electronics, and the resulting costs, have eaten into company margins, leading many to raise prices.
The heart of the issue is the AI boom, which has strained memory chip production as deep-pocketed hyperscalers and data center buildouts increase demand. That’s led to skyrocketing memory costs and lower supply for many consumer electronics companies, which have begun passing those added costs onto shoppers with price hikes.
Apple took the rare step of raising the prices of MacBooks, iMacs, iPads, HomePods, and the Apple TV box on Thursday, boosting some by as much as $300. Microsoft’s Xbox did the same. It announced Xbox game consoles would be $100-$150 more expensive beginning August 1.
So what’s the solution? Musk stated the obvious.
“The production shortfall relative to demand is insane. MUCH higher production is needed,” he wrote on X.
The Tesla CEO has earlier talked about the potential impact of the memory chip shortage in the context of needing to ensure his company has the supply it needs to build out its AI ambitions.
During Tesla’s Q4 earnings call in January, Musk said Tesla could become “limited by supplier output of chips” and added that “memory is an even bigger limiter than AI logic.”
Partially to address this concern, Musk earlier announced the Tesla Terafab joint project with SpaceX and Intel, a multibillion-dollar initiative to build out a chip production facility “combining logic, memory and advanced packaging under one roof.”
