Hard drives already sold out for this year – AI to blame

Hard drive manufacturers have already sold all the units they will make this year, and it looks like the AI infrastructure boom is to blame, with hyperscalers soaking up all the high-capacity storage.

Seagate and Western Digital, two of the Big Three makers of rotating disk drives, confirmed during recent earnings conference calls that they have already flogged all of their manufacturing output.

Western Digital chief Tiang Yew Tan told analysts "We're pretty much sold out for calendar '26. We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers. And we've also established long term agreements with two of them for calendar year '27 and one of them for calendar year '28."

Seagate CEO Dave Mosley said on his own company’s call: "Our nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026, and we expect to begin accepting orders for the first half of calendar year 2027 ...