Western Digital has already sold out its 2026 HDD inventory
AI demand is hitting the world’s HDD supply, and Western Digital has already sold out its 2026 supply
Western Digital has confirmed that the company has already sold out its 2026 HDD supply. This means that every drive the company manufactures this year already has a buyer, raising concerns that high demand will fuel a growing shortage and drive HDD prices higher.
Irving Tan, Western Digital’s CEO, stated that the company has Long-Term Agreements (LTAs) with two companies for 2027 and one for 2028. These agreements set both purchase volumes and prices, highlighting the need for a stable supply for some customers and their desire to set unit pricing in advance.
As we highlighted, we’re pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm POs with our top seven customers. And we’ve also established LTAs with two of them for calendar 2027 and one of them for calendar 2028.
Demand for HDD storage is increasing due to higher NAND/SSD prices. Demand from AI datacenter buildouts has caused the pricing of DRAM and NAND memory to skyrocket. This has made HDD storage more appealing to value-focused customers, though this demand has caused HDD prices to increase over recent months.
High demand will cause HDD manufacturers to focus more on the datacenter market. In this market, customers buy in bulk and purchase the most expensive/storage-dense HDDs. Today, the consumer market only accounts for a minority of the HDD market. Today, even value-oriented laptops use HDD storage. Over the coming months, we expect the cost of consumer-grade HDDs to rise and for availability to decrease. Once again, AI is ruining another segment of the PC/hardware market.
You can join the discussion on Western Digital’s HDD sell-out on the OC3D Forums.
