Tim Cook, Elon Musk Warn AI Boom Is Driving Higher Prices

The chief executives of two trillion-dollar companies are warning that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is contributing to rising prices.

Cook said Apple had tried to absorb higher costs but could no longer do so .(Photo: Apple)

First, Apple CEO Tim Cook warned that soaring costs for memory and storage chips are forcing the company to raise prices on its products.

"This is a hundred-year flood," Cook told The Wall Street Journal. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years," according to a recent report by Jing Pan for Moneywise.

Cook said Apple had tried to absorb higher costs but could no longer do so.

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases being passed on to us, but the situation has become unsustainable," he said.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk echoed Cook's concerns in a post on X.

"Biggest price jump in anything I've ever seen too," Musk wrote after citing Cook's comments.

Musk also shared a Wall Street Journal article titled "The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation," which argued that America's AI expansion is increasing the prices of products ranging from smartphones to electricity.

One chart cited in the report showed consumer prices for computer software and accessories had risen about 15% from a year earlier.