Western Digital survey shows enterprises favor proven, reliable AI storage infrastructure over new tech

• Western Digital survey results for 2026 show large customers shifting AI infrastructure planning toward storage scale, predictable economics, and proven reliability as production deployments drive persistent data growth.
• 66% reported deprioritizing new technologies in favor of infrastructure with consistent reliability and predictable performance at scale.
• Support for AI training and inference tied with reliability and availability as the top priority at 69%, while latency optimization ranked at 7%.
• 87% prioritized capacity expansion and total cost of ownership optimization, pointing to longer-horizon spending decisions anchored in storage economics.
• 74% cited total cost of ownership, capacity, or scalability as key advantages of HDD-based infrastructure; 70% reported HDD-majority storage mixes, including 35% with HDDs above 75% of capacity.

Disclaimer: This news brief was created by Public Technologies (PUBT) using generative artificial intelligence. While PUBT strives to provide accurate and timely information, this AI-generated content is for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as financial, investment, or legal advice. Western Digital Corporation published the original content used to generate this news brief via Business Wire (Ref. ID: 20260520775696) on May 20, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained therein.