Western Digital has officially sold out its entire hard drive production capacity for 2026 — with more than ten months still left in the year — as artificial intelligence companies snap up storage at record levels.
During its latest earnings call, Western Digital CEO Irving Tan confirmed that the company’s storage output for calendar year 2026 is fully allocated. The overwhelming majority of that capacity has been secured by just seven major enterprise customers. Even more striking, three of those clients have already locked in production agreements extending into 2027 and 2028.
The announcement underscores how dramatically AI-driven demand is reshaping the global hardware market.
Western Digital also revealed that enterprise customers now represent 95 percent of its revenue, leaving only five percent tied to consumer sales. That shift marks a major departure from traditional storage markets, where consumer PCs and small businesses once played a much larger role. With AI data centers requiring enormous volumes of high-capacity storage, companies are racing to secure long-term supply contracts, leaving less incentive for manufacturers to prioritize retail products.
The storage shortage is part of a broader strain across the technology supply chain. AI firms are consuming massive quantities of memory, storage, and processors as they expand data centers and build increasingly powerful models. Memory manufacturers have already warned that supply remains significantly below demand. High-bandwidth memory, used heavily in AI systems, consumes substantially more silicon wafers than traditional DRAM, tightening supply for consumer-grade components.
As a result, RAM prices have climbed steadily, PC manufacturers have implemented repeated price increases, gaming hardware production has faced constraints, and processor costs have surged. Some reports even suggest next-generation gaming console launches could be delayed in hopes that AI-driven shortages ease before major product rollouts.
Industry leaders have cautioned that AI data center expansion continues to accelerate faster than manufacturing capacity can adjust. Western Digital’s full sell-out for 2026 — and partial commitments extending into 2027 and 2028 — suggests the imbalance may persist for years. With AI firms locking in multi-year agreements, the storage landscape has shifted decisively toward enterprise dominance, leaving consumers and small businesses to navigate higher prices and tighter availability across a wide range of devices.
