Key Takeaways
- Apple is developing a new M7 Ultra chip with support for up to 1.5TB of memory, a significant leap from current offerings.
- This massive memory capacity is driven by the increasing demands of large AI models, aiming to enable local processing of complex AI tasks.
- The M7 Ultra is also intended for use in next-generation AI servers, powering Apple's AI services both on-device and in data centers.
Remember when 16GB of RAM felt like a flex? Apple would like a word. According to a fresh report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter, the upcoming Apple M7 Ultra chip with 1.5TB memory support is now in active development, and it could become the most memory-rich piece of silicon the company has ever built. That is 1,536GB of unified memory sitting on a single package, roughly double what the M5 Ultra is expected to offer when it arrives later this year.
For context, most flagship laptops in 2026 ship with 16GB or 32GB of RAM. Apple is designing a chip that can hold nearly 50 times that. Casual overkill? Not quite. There is a very deliberate strategy at play here, and it has everything to do with artificial intelligence.
In This Article
Why Apple Suddenly Wants This Much Memory
Large AI models are memory gluttons. The bigger the model, the more RAM it demands, and anyone hoping to run multi-billion-parameter models locally without leaning on the cloud needs a colossal pool of fast memory to do it. That is exactly the gap Apple wants to close. Gurman’s report suggests the M7 Ultra is being designed to push AI performance closer to dedicated enterprise accelerators such as Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which currently dominate serious AI computing.
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There is also a server angle. The M7 Ultra is not just destined for a future Mac Studio. Apple reportedly plans to use the chip as the backbone of its next-generation AI servers, expected to be deployed around 2029, powering Apple Intelligence both on your device and in Apple’s own data centres. An M5 Ultra-based server platform is expected to land first, with the M7 Ultra version following behind it.
A Full Circle Moment for Apple Silicon
Here is a fun bit of history. The last Apple computer to support 1.5TB of RAM was the 2019 Intel-powered Mac Pro, the famous cheese grater tower. That machine used traditional slotted memory, so users could keep stuffing in RAM sticks until their wallets gave up. When Apple switched to its own silicon in 2020, unified memory arrived with blazing bandwidth but a hard ceiling, because the RAM is fused right onto the chip package. You cannot upgrade it. Ever.
For six years, that old Intel tower has quietly held the memory crown over every shiny new Apple Silicon Mac. The M7 Ultra would finally match it, while keeping the enormous bandwidth advantage that unified memory brings. A small poetic victory, roughly a decade in the making.
The Roadmap Is Getting Weird, in a Good Way
Apple’s chip schedule has taken an unusual turn. The company is reportedly skipping the M6 Pro, Max and Ultra tiers entirely. Only the base M6 is expected to ship. Instead, Apple has fast-tracked the M7 family, which is expected in 2027, with the M7 Ultra and its monster memory ceiling arriving around 2028 in a refreshed Mac Studio. Before that, an M5 Ultra Mac Studio with up to 768GB of memory should arrive later in 2026, setting a new Apple Silicon record on its own.
The Catch, Because There Is Always a Catch
Two big asterisks hang over this story. First, the ongoing global memory shortage has made high-capacity RAM both scarce and painfully expensive, and Gurman notes that Apple may not actually ship the full 1.5TB configuration if supply conditions do not improve. Apple has already trimmed the 512GB and 256GB options from the current M3 Ultra Mac Studio this year, leaving 96GB as the top choice.
Second, the price. Based on Apple’s current memory pricing of roughly 25 dollars per gigabyte, upgrading from a 128GB base to the full 1.5TB would add more than 35,000 dollars to the bill. That is before you have paid for the actual computer. This is workstation and enterprise territory, not a casual creator purchase.
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What Does This All Mean?
The Apple M7 Ultra specifications and release date details are still two years from becoming reality, and plenty can change between a newsletter report and a shipping product. But the direction is unmistakable. Apple is no longer building chips that happen to be good at AI. It is building chips around AI, from the pocket to the data centre. Whether the memory market cooperates is the trillion-dollar question. Well, the 35,000-dollar question, at least.
