Apple CEO Tim Cook announced in an exclusive interview that the technology giant will raise prices on its products due to unprecedented increases in memory and storage chip costs driven by AI demand.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has confirmed plans to implement price increases across its product line as soaring costs for memory and storage chips have made current pricing unsustainable. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that the company can no longer shield customers from the dramatic cost increases being passed along by chip suppliers.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”
The announcement marks a significant shift for Apple, which has historically used its purchasing power to secure favorable pricing from suppliers. Cook declined to provide specific details about the timing or magnitude of the planned increases, or which products would be affected. However, industry observers expect the changes could impact the anticipated iPhone 18 lineup expected in September, which is rumored to include a new foldable iPhone model. Price adjustments for Macs and iPads could occur even sooner, following Apple’s recent decision to raise the starting price of the Mac Mini between launch events.
The root cause of the pricing pressure stems from explosive demand for memory and storage chips from artificial intelligence companies. Since major technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon began announcing substantial increases in their capital spending budgets last year, prices for both memory and storage chips have quadrupled. Research firm TechInsights projects that both categories will continue experiencing price increases into 2027.
According to TechInsights’ estimates, passing the higher chip costs directly to consumers while maintaining Apple’s current profit margins would add approximately $270 to the price of the next iPhone Pro model, potentially bringing the iPhone 18 Pro to a starting price of $1,299.
Memory chips, technically known as DRAM, and storage chips, referred to as NAND, are essential components in virtually all computing devices including smartphones, laptops, game consoles, medical equipment, and automobiles. However, AI servers are now consuming rapidly increasing volumes of these chips, creating supply constraints that affect even a company as large and financially powerful as Apple.
Cook specifically highlighted the DRAM memory market as a particular concern, pointing to increased allocations going toward high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers. “There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” Cook said. “We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line.”
The memory chip market is dominated by three major manufacturers: Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea, and Micron in the United States. The storage chip market includes those three companies plus Kioxia and Sandisk. These suppliers have seen remarkable financial performance over the past year, with Micron and SK Hynix shares exploded more than 800 percent, while Kioxia and Sandisk have surged 4,600 percent.
Breitbart News previously reported that Micron predicted RAM shortages this year in a December 2025 announcement:
The tech giant reported record revenue of $13.64 billion in the past quarter, a significant increase from the $8.71 billion it earned during the same period last year. This impressive growth is largely attributed to the increasing demand from companies like OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and Google, as they fill their data centers with powerful chips that require high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
However, this surge in demand for HBM technology, which uses three times the silicon wafers compared to standard DRAM, has led Micron to prioritize these lucrative deals over its consumer-facing business, Crucial. As a result, the company has recently shuttered Crucial, leaving fewer resources for the production of DRAM used in everyday products such as PCs, smartphones, smart TVs, and even cars. This shift in focus has already started to impact the prices of DDR5 RAM kits, with other devices expected to feel the effects soon.
During the earnings call, Mehrotra emphasized the severity of the situation, stating that “over the last few months, our customers’ AI data center build-out plans have driven a sharp increase in demand forecast for memory and storage.” He further added that “supply will remain substantially short of the demand for the foreseeable future,” indicating that the memory shortage is likely to persist for an extended period.
Cook indicated Apple is prepared to use its substantial cash reserves to help address supply constraints. “We’re willing to use our balance sheet to help be a part of the solution,” he said. “Obviously, more capacity is needed.” However, he declined to provide specifics, and it remains unclear whether Apple would match the three-to-five year agreements with large cash prepayments that AI companies are offering to secure chip supply.
The CEO ruled out the possibility of Apple building its own memory and storage manufacturing facilities. “We can’t do everything,” Cook said. “We know what we’re good at.”
AI’s impact is being felt beyond its direct impact on our economy and culture. The tech giant’s insatiable hunger for memory and other computer components is introducing new wrinkles for consumers interested in buying new laptops, phones, and even gaming consoles. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.