Elon Musk predicts humanoid robots will drive unprecedented RAM demand

Elon Musk has stated that the memory requirements for humanoid robots will eventually exceed all other applications on Earth. Commenting on X in late October 2026, Musk argued that because robots require physical substrates to interact with and “shape atoms” in the real world, their need for random access memory (RAM) will be massive.

While Musk noted that superintelligence (SI) will require even greater computing power, he predicted that nearly 100% of SI compute will take place in deep space. This distinction highlights the unique demand for local, high-volume memory in terrestrial robotics to handle real-time sensing, decision-making, and physical actions.

Market analysts have noted the potential scale of this demand. If Tesla were to produce 10 million Optimus robots annually, each equipped with 72GB of memory, the total requirement would reach approximately 720 petabytes. While robots typically utilize low-power double data rate (LPDDR) memory rather than high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the shift of AI from data centers to physical machines could significantly drive growth for memory manufacturers like Micron and SK Hynix.