Apple, Micron, OpenAI and A.I.’s Rough Summer

Oh, lovely—the AI summer is turning into a British bank holiday: grey, damp, and full of disappointment. Rising memory prices, more expensive iPads, and a longer wait for OpenAI to go public. The sector that 'has driven markets skyward' (their words, not mine) is now hitting turbulence, which is corporate-speak for 'the champagne has gone flat.' The first public price for frontier AI we documented last month is apparently going to remain theoretical, as OpenAI drags its feet on the IPO while blaming 'market conditions.' Sure, Sam.

Let's unpack this glorious trifecta of bad news. Micron's memory prices are up, which means Apple's iPads will cost more, because nothing says 'AI revolution' like paying an extra £50 for the privilege of running a chatbot that still can't book a restaurant table. And OpenAI? The company that was supposed to go public and give every retail investor a piece of the AGI dream is now 'taking longer than expected.' Translation: the numbers didn't look good, or the board isn't sure the hype can survive a quarterly earnings call with actual revenue figures. Either way, the chickens are coming home to roost, and they're pecking at the balance sheets.

The real joke is that this turbulence is a feature, not a bug. The AI sector has been running on borrowed time and venture capital fumes, pretending exponential growth could defy the laws of economics. Now memory prices—actual physical hardware, the boring stuff—are reminding everyone that even the most magical software runs on chips that cost real money. So enjoy the discount iPads while they lasted. The future is arriving, but it's late, it's expensive, and it's a bit embarrassed about the whole thing.