Apple's M5 Ultra Mac Studio targets local LLM users

The M5 Ultra Mac Studio supports up to 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth, and Apple claims 4.5x peak AI compute compared to the M3 Ultra. A 256GB configuration is also offered as a lower-cost option. This memory capacity allows local inference on LLMs with hundreds of billions of parameters. Developers weighing local inference hardware can track Apple silicon capability shifts like this on daily.dev.

The M5 Ultra Mac Studio starts at $5,499, which is a 37.5% price increase over the M3 Ultra's starting price. Despite the higher cost, it is presented as a cheaper alternative to enterprise GPU rigs for running large models locally without sending data to external servers. Anyone comparing local LLM hardware costs against cloud inference can follow pricing shifts like this via daily.dev.