Descriptions:
A Bloomberg Technology interview with a Western Digital executive makes the case that hard disk drives are an underappreciated but structurally critical component of the AI infrastructure buildout. The central argument: 80% of data stored in the cloud resides on HDDs, and as AI workloads — particularly multimodal and video applications — generate increasingly large, permanently retained datasets, storage demand is compounding on top of already aggressive data center growth. The analogy offered is that GPUs are the power generators but data is the fuel, and HDDs store that fuel.
WD projects 25% compound annual growth in exabyte storage demand over the next five years. On the product roadmap, the company is currently shipping 32TB drives, expects to release 40TB drives in the second half of 2026, and targets roughly 60TB drives by 2028 — effectively doubling capacity per drive in two years. Rather than making an abrupt switch to heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), the path competitor Seagate has pursued, WD is running a dual-track strategy, extending its EPMR technology toward 60TB while qualifying HAMR with two customers for drives targeting 100TB and beyond.
The executive also discusses the WD-SanDisk separation, concerns about hyperscaler double-ordering in a tight supply environment, and the shift in customer relationships toward long-horizon demand visibility as storage becomes a strategic infrastructure layer rather than a commodity line item.
📺 Source: Bloomberg Technology · Published March 04, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
