Will we soon be renting computers from the cloud due to a lack of system memory?

The future of personal computing is moving away from local hardware and into the cloud. Jeff Bezos warns that next-generation AI models will require so much computing power and memory that the average home PC will soon be unable to run them. Instead of buying expensive components every few years, Bezos’ vision is that we will simply pay a monthly subscription fee to access a “virtual supercomputer” via a thin client device.

This transition is further fueled by the so-called 2026 memory crisis. RAM module prices (especially DDR5 and GDDR7 standards) have skyrocketed as manufacturers like Samsung and Micron focus all their capacity on server systems for companies like OpenAI and Nvidia. For the average consumer, this means that equipping a desktop computer with enough memory to run advanced AI locally would cost thousands of euros. In such an environment, cloud computing becomes the only financially viable option for most people.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are already preparing the infrastructure for this revolution. Instead of an operating system running on your hard drive, you will access a cloud system via a fast internet connection that will adapt to your needs on the fly. If you want to play a demanding game or edit a video in 8K resolution, you can increase the number of cores and the amount of RAM with the push of a button (and for an additional fee). While purists fear the loss of control and privacy, Bezos believes this model is inevitable. The physical computers under our desks will soon become nothing more than expensive “typewriters,” while the real digital power will hide in the clouds of big tech companies.