SAN JOSE, California, May 26, 2026, 08:02 PDT
- Western Digital stock moved up to new record highs after Evercore ISI boosted its price target to $575 from $500 and maintained its Outperform rating. The firm pointed to AI infrastructure demand.
- Investors now see hard disk drives as important to the AI data-center supply chain, a shift from the old view of them as just another slow-growth hardware market.
- The stock traded about 10% higher at $532.74, putting the company’s market cap near $183.6 billion.
Western Digital shares hit an all-time high Tuesday after Evercore ISI raised its price target on the data-storage company to $575. The move builds on gains as demand for hard disk drives for AI data centers keeps driving the rally.
The stock traded at $532.74, up about 10% in morning deals, after reaching an intraday high of $536. Western Digital’s market cap was close to $183.6 billion.
AI spending is moving down the stack. Budgets are reaching high-capacity hard disk drives, or HDDs, the spinning disks that store big data files more cheaply than flash. Reuters reported last month that AI inference—the process when trained models output responses—needs a lot of data stored on bigger drives. That has given Western Digital some pricing strength.
Western Digital and the rest of the HDD sector are still “critical and still underappreciated” parts of the AI buildout, Evercore ISI’s Amit Daryanani said, cited by a TipRanks report on The Fly. The analyst kept an Outperform rating. Revenue growth for the group could run ahead of exabyte growth, which tracks storage capacity shipped. TipRanks
Western Digital hit a record $525.24 earlier Tuesday, Investing.com reported. Shares have jumped 909.9% over the past year, the site said. Western Digital’s revenue rose 32% over the last 12 months, and its value stood at $180.27 billion, according to the same report.
Western Digital’s April numbers look strong. Revenue for the fiscal third quarter hit $3.34 billion, up 45% from last year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings came in at $2.72 a share. The company is guiding to about $3.65 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter revenue, give or take $100 million.
Western Digital Corporation said it raised its quarterly dividend 20% to 15 cents a share. Chief Executive Irving Tan said in the release that AI workloads like training and inference generate data that “must be stored persistently and cost-efficiently on HDDs.” Western Digital Corporation
Western Digital shares moved up after the company finished spinning off its flash-memory arm, Sandisk, back in February 2025. Reuters reported this split let Western Digital zero in on data-center demand as an HDD pure play.
Storage stocks moved together as buyers kept looking for AI-linked names. Seagate, Western Digital’s top HDD rival, gained around 4%. Micron and Sandisk also traded higher with more money flowing into memory and storage on the AI trade.
There’s a catch. After running up nearly straight for a year, the stock could get hit hard if AI storage demand drops, prices slip or customers pull back. Investing.com’s fair-value analysis puts Western Digital above fair value. Western Digital’s filings name demand swings, supplier issues, tariffs and supply-chain trouble as risks.
For now the market is putting a premium on scarcity. Western Digital hard drives might not be grabbing the most attention in the AI story, but Tuesday made it clear investors still want companies that hold the data once the chips are done.
