AI Data Explosion: Can WDC Become a Bigger Storage Winner?

Western Digital is capitalizing on persistent data storage demand driven by AI inference and Agentic AI workloads. The company is ramping 40TB ePMR drives and developing 44TB HAMR technology for 2027, while UltraSMR is expected to reach 60% of nearline exabyte shipments by fiscal 2027. As AI shifts from training to inference and autonomous systems generate massive data volumes, HDDs remain cost-efficient for long-term storage, positioning WDC for sustained capacity-driven growth.