AI Firms Have Snapped Up All of Western Digital’s Hard Drives for the Year

The HDD supply crunch isn't driven solely by AI data centers. China's government-backed PC replacement program has also been a major demand driver.

It's mid-February, and AI companies have already purchased Western Digital's entire hard drive production run for 2026. WD CEO Irving Tan told investors during the company's Q2 FY2026 earnings call that the company is pretty much sold out for the rest of this calendar year, with firm purchase orders from its largest customers and long-term contracts extending into the next couple of years (via Gizmodo).

Those buyers are mostly AI and hyperscale cloud companies. Cloud and enterprise customers now generate the overwhelming majority of WD's HDD revenue, while consumer product sales account for roughly 5% of total HDD sales.

AI data centers need massive pools of cheap, bulk storage to feed and archive training data, logs, and embeddings, so they still ...