AI Boom Causing Global Hardware Shortage: Western Digital Sold Out Until 2027

Enterprise Demand Swallows Up Storage

The insatiable appetite for Artificial Intelligence is creating a massive hardware shortage. Western Digital, one of the world's largest storage manufacturers, has announced that its entire hard drive capacity for 2026 is "pretty much sold out." This shortage is driven entirely by AI Data Centers rushing to secure storage for the massive datasets required to train and run new models.

Consumer Impact & Future Outlook

While enterprise demand skyrockets, consumer sales now account for just 5% of Western Digital's revenue. This shift means regular consumers could face higher prices and limited availability for high-capacity drives. The company has already secured Long Term Agreements (LTAs) with major tech giants for 2027 and 2028 , signaling that this storage crunch is far from over. As AI models grow larger, the physical infrastructure to support them is becoming the new gold.

Read more at The Verge .