Musk agrees with Tim Cook: ‘The price of memory chips has increased like never before’

In an interview with Wall Street JournalCook shared that during his time working in the electronics supply chain, from IBM, Compaq to Apple, he had never seen prices fluctuate as strongly as in the past 6 months. He called this a “once-in-a-hundred-year flood” that had never been seen “in any field for more than 40 years”.

Musk quoted this statement and appeared to agree. “This is also the biggest price jump I’ve ever seen,” he wrote on X this week.

Theo Business Insiderthe core cause is that the AI ​​fever with a wave of data center construction has put pressure on the production of memory chips, which are widely used in consumer electronics. The sharp increase in demand for memory chips pushed prices up, causing many companies to reduce profits and have to increase product prices to compensate.

On the evening of June 25, Apple increased the prices of iPad series, MacBook computers, Mac Mini, and Mac Studio by around 20%, with some models up to 300 USD higher due to the impact of memory chip prices. Microsoft also made a similar move when announcing that Xbox game consoles would be 100-150 USD more expensive from August 1.

“The production shortfall compared to demand is too large. Production levels need to be greatly increased,” Musk wrote on X.

Previously, Musk mentioned the potential impact of the memory chip shortage in the context of Tesla needing to ensure supply to realize its AI ambitions. During the fourth quarter 2025 earnings call, he said the company may be “limited by suppliers’ chip output” and “memory chips are even a bigger bottleneck than logic chips.”

Terafab, a multi-billion dollar project to build a manufacturing facility that combines logic chips, memory chips and advanced packaging technology, could help partially address Musk’s concerns. The project is jointly implemented by Tesla, SpaceX and Intel.

“We either have to build Terafab, or there won’t be enough chips,” Musk said during a presentation in Austin, Texas, on March 21. The billionaire emphasized that global chip output currently “only meets a small part” of the future demand for his companies.

Theo ReutersTerafab has been mentioned a lot by Musk recently. He aims to achieve one terawatt of computing capacity per year, double the half-terawatt level – the highest capacity a US factory currently has.