Tim Cook’s final words of warning as Apple CEO: US now at risk from ‘hundred-year flood’ — even Elon Musk is worried

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The Tim Cook era at Apple is officially over — at least in the CEO's office.

After 15 years at the helm of one of the world's most valuable companies, Cook stepped down as chief executive on Sept. 1, handing the reins to longtime hardware chief John Ternus. Cook isn't leaving Apple entirely: He has moved into the role of executive chairman.

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But before closing the book on his historic run as CEO, the supply-chain mastermind left Americans with a warning that was difficult to ignore.

During his final earnings call, Cook warned (1) that Apple was caught in what he called a "100-year flood" in memory-chip pricing — a crisis fueled largely by the enormous appetite of AI data centers.

It echoed the chilling assessment he had delivered weeks earlier.

"This is a hundred-year flood," Cook told The Wall Street Journal (2). "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."

That is no small admission from the executive who helped build Apple's famously sophisticated global supply chain. Cook said the company had tried to shield its customers from soaring memory and storage costs, but the pressure had become "unsustainable."

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," he said.

And Cook wasn't the only tech leader sounding the alarm.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly agreed (3) with the outgoing Apple CEO, calling it the "biggest price jump in anything I've ever seen."

Musk also shared a Wall Street Journal article (4) titled "The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation." The article warned that America's artificial intelligence buildout is pushing up prices on everything from smartphones to electricity.

One chart in the article showed consumer prices for computer software and accessories have surged about 15% from a year earlier.

Apple subsequently raised prices across numerous Mac and iPad models. But this is hardly an Apple-only problem. Other major device makers, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Nintendo, have also raised prices.