Shares of major data storage companies such as Western Digital and Seagate Technology have soared more than 200% in 2025, as the global artificial intelligence (AI) boom fuels unprecedented demand for high-capacity storage infrastructure.
AI Revolution Powers Storage Sector Growth
The surge comes as tech giants and cloud providers race to expand their data centers, requiring massive amounts of storage to support AI model training, inference, and data processing. Both Western Digital and Seagate — long considered mature players in the hardware sector — have experienced a resurgence, becoming critical enablers of the AI revolution.
“AI workloads are storage-hungry by design,” said Lena Morris, senior analyst at DataCore Insights. “From training multimodal models to hosting enormous datasets, the demand for scalable, high-speed storage solutions has never been higher.”
Record Earnings and Technological Advancements
Western Digital’s latest earnings report showed record-breaking revenue from NVMe SSDs and enterprise hard drives, while Seagate’s new heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology has enabled unprecedented data density in its drives. Both companies have announced plans to expand production capacity in 2026 to keep pace with soaring demand.
Investors Flock to Storage Hardware Stocks
Investors have taken notice, with storage firms now outperforming many AI software and semiconductor stocks. The storage hardware sector’s total market capitalization has more than doubled in 2025, reflecting growing recognition that AI’s infrastructure layer extends beyond processors and GPUs.
Cloud Providers Drive Rising Orders
Analysts point to rising orders from hyperscale cloud providers — including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — as well as AI startups requiring exabyte-scale storage. This surge in orders underscores the pivotal role of data storage technology in supporting AI’s exponential growth.
The New Heavyweights of the AI Era
While some caution that the current pace of growth may not be sustainable long-term, the trend highlights a new reality: in the AI era, data is not just fuel — it’s also weight. The companies that store and manage it are becoming the market’s newest heavyweights.
