- Western Digital CEO says its 2026 hard drive capacity is already fully booked
- Business customers dominate orders, leaving consumer products with just five percent of revenue.
- AI-driven data growth intensifies pressure on global HDD supply chains
Western Digital has revealed that all of its HDD capacity for 2026 is apparently already fully booked, mainly due to enterprise-level deals with hyperscalers and large cloud providers.
The increase in demand is linked to the current expansion of data centers, particularly in the United States, where large amounts of content must be stored efficiently.
Hard drives remain the most cost-effective solution for storing exabytes of data, including extracted web content, processed backups, and inference logs required for AI workloads.
Western Digital closes multi-year deals
“As we highlighted, we are virtually sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers,” Western Digital CEO Irving Tan stated during the company’s recent financial results.
“And we have also established LTAs with two of them for calendar 2027 and one of them for calendar 2028. Obviously, these LTAs have a combination of exabyte volume and price.”
As AI adoption grows, pressure on suppliers intensifies, echoing similar pressures previously seen with DRAM, NAND, and other critical PC components.
The bulk of Western Digital’s orders come from cloud storage providers that rely on hard drives for long-term storage of massive data sets.
Consumer products now account for just 5% of its revenue, while cloud-oriented businesses contribute nearly 89%.
The shortage of available hard drives has implications for pricing as demand exceeds supply and production schedules cannot quickly meet hyperscaler requirements.
Historically, shortages of core components like RAM and SSDs have resulted in temporary price increases, and the current situation with hard drives seems likely to follow a similar pattern.
Manufacturing limitations and the pace of expansion of AI-powered data centers create a scenario where companies may face higher costs for the storage capacity they need.
Analysts note that while hard drives remain cheaper per terabyte than RAM or other memory solutions, low availability can still put upward pressure on procurement budgets.
Western Digital’s focus on enterprise contracts reflects the broader trend in the PC and storage industries of pivoting toward AI workloads.
Hyperscalers, cloud storage providers, and large-scale computing operations are increasingly the primary consumers of high-capacity drives, while traditional desktop and consumer segments are losing priority.
The company has aligned production to meet these demands, leaving the consumer market with limited options.
While HDD technology itself is mature, the combination of AI-driven demand, supply chain constraints, and continued cloud expansion means capacity will remain limited.
It is now certain that companies are driving HDD market dynamics and price fluctuations seem likely to continue.
Via Wccftech
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
