Singapore—May 9, 2026, 22:04 SGT
Seagate Technology Holdings plc wrapped up Friday’s session with gains, leaving the hard-drive maker hovering near its recent peaks as traders factored in a more limited supply of data storage driven by artificial intelligence demand. On the Nasdaq, Seagate closed at $782.64. Western Digital finished at $480, and NetApp remained at $118.
This shift is significant: the AI trade has moved beyond just the chips powering large-model training. Now, demand is reaching hard disk drives, or HDDs—those magnetic storage devices built for handling vast troves of data—as cloud providers hunt for cost-effective options to stash the surging amounts of data churned out by AI applications and video-intensive tasks.
Seagate posted $3.11 billion in revenue for its fiscal third quarter last month, with GAAP diluted earnings per share coming in at $3.27. On a non-GAAP basis—which strips out certain items—the figure landed at $4.10 per share. For the fiscal fourth quarter, Seagate is projecting revenue at $3.45 billion, give or take $100 million, and is aiming for non-GAAP diluted EPS of $5.00, within a 20-cent range. “A new era of structural growth,” is how CEO Dave Mosley described the outlook. Seagate Investors
After the results, Mosley told investors that “AI is amplifying demand” for existing applications like video, Reuters reported. Morningstar analysts see the AI buildout supporting HDD makers’ pricing power into 2030. Seagate and Western Digital execs, for their part, have already said capacity is allocated or sold out through calendar 2026. Reuters
That shift has altered the conversation on Wall Street around a business long seen as highly cyclical. Morgan Stanley bumped up its Seagate price target to $767 from $582, maintaining an Overweight rating. The firm pointed to stronger-than-modeled pricing, margins and earnings power, and noted that HDDs continue to handle roughly 80% of cloud storage demand.
Other companies in the sector are echoing the same message. Just last week, Sandisk projected quarterly revenue ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, lining up with Western Digital and Seagate as all three point to solid enterprise demand for storage gear fueling AI data centers. Western Digital’s own revenue outlook also cleared estimates. Still, shares of both Sandisk and Western Digital lost ground after the news—investors, it seems, are waiting for a new spark after a steep rally.
Memory and storage stocks are still surging. Seagate shares have almost tripled in 2026, Business Insider said Saturday, with Western Digital and Micron both more than doubling during the same stretch. “Most supply-constrained layer” is how Roundhill CEO Dave Mazza put it when describing memory’s role in the AI infrastructure push, according to the outlet. Business Insider
Still, the rally shows some cracks. Seagate’s market cap stood at about $179.2 billion, with a price-to-earnings ratio near 74—hardly much headroom if pricing wobbles or cloud appetite cools. Michael Ashley Schulman, partner at Cerity Partners, noted that competing storage forecasts just aren’t delivering the needed “wow factor” to keep things moving at this clip. Reuters
This week brought a shift in Seagate’s boardroom. The company announced that Michael R. Cannon, who’s been lead independent director since 2011, plans to step down when his current term wraps up in October. According to an SEC filing, Cannon’s exit isn’t tied to any dispute over how Seagate runs things.
Right now, Seagate stands out in hardware: demand keeps running hot, supply hasn’t caught up, and big cloud names still want low-cost mass storage. The real uncertainty? Whether the stock’s already run too far ahead of itself before the next earnings report.
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