Western Digital has confirmed that it has almost sold its entire stock of 2026 hard drives.
The increased demand is driven by the rise of AI and increasing need for data centres.
Western Digital has confirmed that its stock of hard drives is close to selling out for 2026, as the impact of the AI revolution continues to hit component prices. The impact on RAM has been well documented, with many companies citing price increases, but that's not the only effect.
According to Western Digital, its top seven customers – in enterprise – have hard drive orders in for 2026, with some already getting orders in for 2027 and 2028 as well. The details come from WD's earnings call (via PCMag) suggesting that for regular consumers, being able to buy new drives will become increasingly difficult. That includes the best PS5 SSDs – which have already risen in price.
The increased demand for AI data centres has had a knock-on effect on both RAM and storage, and that's being felt in the supply chain. It's likely to be regular consumers who suffer, as larger enterprise customers (like PC manufacturers) will dominate supply. That will mean the latest components are harder to find and the prices more expensive.
That's already being seen, with SSD now substantially more expensive than HDD, which is likely driving demand for cheaper hard drives. This is likely to impact prices when buying a new laptop or PC too. Some manufacturers may soak up the cost themselves, but it's likely that we'll see costs creeping up to accommodate the additional expense.
Talking about increasing RAM demand, we recently reported that Apple will probably keep prices stable and avoid rises, because it has the margins to accommodate that. At the same time, Nothing CEO Carl Pei has said that price rises are coming in 2026 because of the squeeze on components.
Demand for data centres is increasing to accommodate the increasing needs of AI. We're in an AI race, with big players throwing everything they can at the tech to try to gain dominance.
That not only has an impact on the hardware needed, but it's also caused wide concerns over water usage for cooling and the energy needed to run them. While some AI use cases – like medical research – feels justified, the mass creation of images and video has seen something of a backlash.
We're only at the beginning of this cycle, so it's likely that unless the supply can be significantly increased over the coming years, it's going to be increasingly expensive to get your hands on the latest tech.
