• Apple's Mac Mini starting price rose this week as the company reported a surge in demand.
• The cheapest model is now $799, and the $599 model no longer appears on Apple's website.
• CEO Tim Cook says AI is driving the unexpected demand for the device.

Apple's "most affordable Mac" just got more expensive.

The starting price for the Mac Mini jumped $200 this week as the company reported an AI-fueled increase in demand for the compact computer.

The $599 base model with 256GB of storage, touted on the website as the "mini-est, most affordable Mac with mighty performance," had disappeared from Apple's site as of Friday.

The website now says the starting price for a Mac Mini is $799, which comes with 512GB of storage. Earlier this week, the website listed the starting price as $599, the Internet Archive shows.

While it's not an increase in price for the model that comes with 512GB of storage, it means the entry point for a Mac Mini is now higher.

Apple, which did not respond to a request for comment, said on its quarterly earnings call this week that it hasn't been able to keep up with an AI-related clamor for the Mac Mini.

The line got a boost in popularity earlier this year when tech enthusiasts sought them out to use with OpenClaw, an open-source, autonomous AI agent previously known as Clawdbot.

CEO Tim Cook attributed the boost to the device's abilities as a "amazing" platform for "AI and agentic tools."

"The customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted," Cook said on the call. "And so we saw higher-than-expected demand."

Cook said it could take "several months" for supply to balance out with Mac Mini demand.