Can’t find a Mac mini or Mac Studio? Blame the AI boom
Image: Apple/Rajesh Pandey/Cult of Mac
The Mac mini and Mac Studio are apparently a huge hit among AI companies. OpenAI reportedly purchased tens of thousands of Macs from Apple for reinforcement learning and “computer-use” AI agents.
Anthropic, which offers Claude AI, is renting Mac minis through Amazon Web Services (AWS) for similar reasons.
This heavy demand helps explain why Apple launched new versions of the Mac mini and Mac Studio last week, months before the usual fall release window.
AI labs can’t get enough of Apple’s smallest Macs
Apple typically announces new Macs in October or November. But it went out of its way to announce the M5 Pro and M6-powered Mac mini and the M5 Max/M5 Ultra Mac Studio in late August, just a few weeks before iPhone 18’s launch event. Turns out, it’s because of enterprise AI demand.
The Information reports that OpenAI purchased tens of thousands of Mac mini and Mac Studio units in the last few months. It’s using the Macs for reinforcement learning and computer-use agentic AI workflows. Anthropic is leveraging its close ties with Amazon to rent Macs through AWS.
While consumers generally prefer MacBooks, Apple’s desktops models better handle AI workloads due to a more robust cooling system that can keep up with extended heavy workloads.
While Macs have also become increasingly popular among regular users for their performance and battery life, strong demand from large companies is likely contributing significantly to the ongoing shortage. The ongoing DRAM and NAND supply crunch is only exacerbating the situation.
Apple never saw the Mac AI boom coming
Apple reportedly did not anticipate such strong AI-driven demand for theMac Studio and Mac mini, which caught the company off guard when demand suddenly surged. It even lacked an enterprise sales and support team to handle this market.
It’s due to the surge in enterprise demand that Apple announced the refreshed Mac mini and Mac Studio in August, instead of October.
Apple is also only shipping them in the third week of September after an unusually long pre-order period. That will help the company better manage its supply chain and cater to the growing demand.
Rajesh has been writing about consumer technology for over a decade, with a strong focus on iPhones, Macs and Apple’s ecosystem. He enjoys digging into Apple software updates, hardware changes, and discovering new Mac apps that make work faster and more enjoyable.
You can reach out to him at mail[at]rajeshpandey.me.
