Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) raised prices across multiple MacBook and iPad models on Thursday, citing soaring memory and storage costs driven by the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom.
The company warned that higher component costs had become unavoidable, triggering a swift and sharp market reaction as shares fell 6.15% on Thursday, their steepest single-day decline since April 2025.
In after-hours trading, Apple shares recovered slightly, gaining 0.40% to reach $276.25, according to Benzinga Pro.
The price increases were significant across the product lineup, with the MacBook Air jumping $200 to $1,299, the MacBook Pro rising $300 to $1,999, and the iPad Pro Wi-Fi climbing $200 to $1,199.
The entry-level MacBook Neo rose $100 to $699, while the iPad Air increased $150 to $749, placing the cost burden firmly on everyday consumers already navigating a high-inflation environment.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) responded with sharp criticism, arguing that a company of Apple’s scale had no justification for passing higher costs onto customers.
“Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is ‘unavoidable’ after it made $112 billion in profits last year and spent $310 billion on stock buybacks,” Sanders wrote on social media.
Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk weighed in on the controversy, sharing a Wall Street Journal report on how the AI spending boom is pushing up costs across the broader economy.
Musk quipped, “Biggest price jump in anything I’ve ever seen too,” referencing Cook’s remark that the increase in component costs was unlike anything he had witnessed “in any area in over 40 years.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives took a more measured view, defending the decision as financially necessary given the pressures Apple is facing from the current memory cost cycle.
Ives wrote that Apple “had to raise prices for this memory wave of cost increases,” adding that the company “ripped the band-aid off” because it was “the right move for margins.”
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, argued that the market selloff was an overreaction, pointing to the deeply loyal nature of Apple’s customer base as a stabilizing factor.
“$AAPL trading down feels like an overreaction on fears of demand destruction,” Munster wrote, adding that Apple’s ecosystem makes demand relatively inelastic even in the face of a price increase averaging roughly 17% across Mac products.
The debate cuts to the heart of a wider tension between corporate profitability and consumer affordability, as AI-driven infrastructure costs ripple through the technology supply chain and ultimately land on the price tags of everyday devices.
