Seagate finds 'AI is increasing the value of data' but warns that 43% of businesses lack proper data storage infrastructure 99% expect AI storage
(and storage costs) to explode

Date:
Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:05:00 +0000

Description:
Seagates survey finds AI increasing storage requirements sharply, while many organizations remain unprepared for infrastructure, sustainability and data-management demands.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Seagate study finds 99% of
firms expect AI to increase their storage requirements within three years
Only 38% of organizations consider themselves fully prepared for future demands Storage infrastructure ranks among the biggest obstacles facing AI deployment New data from Seagate has claimed AI is increasing the business importance of stored information while exposing weaknesses in infrastructure readiness.

The company's research found 99% of respondents expect AI workloads to increase their storage requirements in the next three years. Yet only 38% describe their organizations as completely prepared, while 43% identify storage infrastructure among the leading obstacles to wider AI deployment. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: AI is raising the stakes for storage planning The survey gathered responses from more than 2,700 technology decision-makers and found that 86% reported moderate or
significant returns from AI investments.

Among those respondents, 33% said their organizations were already seeing substantial measurable financial or operational benefits from AI initiatives. You may like AIs overlooked storage opportunity AIs storage challenge is really an operational one Could Seagate follow Micron? 90% of its hard drive capacity is going to enterprise, with customers scrambling to secure HDDs in 2029

Those returns increase the importance of retaining information that can support future models, applications and decisions across changing business requirements.

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents expect storage requirements to increase by at
least 26%, including 32% anticipating growth exceeding 50%. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get
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Furthermore, 98% of respondents regard storage as strategic infrastructure rather than simply an administrative technology function.

The survey nevertheless shows that preparedness remains incomplete, with data quality and readiness identified by 53% as another major deployment difficulty.

Storage therefore ranks ahead of compute availability, cited by 27%, and energy constraints, which were identified by 24% of respondents. What to read next How cloud architecture is reinventing primary storage for the AI era How can organizations help ensure they're optimizing ROI from their AI investments? AI data centers are draining more power than the grid can
provide

The figures indicate that adding computing capacity alone does not resolve
the infrastructure limitations organizations encounter when deploying increasingly data-intensive AI systems. Sustainability is becoming part of
the storage equation Infrastructure expansion is also encountering sustainability concerns, with 77% of respondents reporting delays or changes to planned growth.

Within that figure, 36% said investments had undergone major changes, while another 41% experienced smaller postponements linked to sustainability considerations.

Power consumption was the most frequently considered environmental factor for storage hardware, cited by 62% of respondents.

Equipment lifespan followed at 55%, while respondents broadly connected
longer hardware service periods with improved sustainability across data center operations.

Current confidence remains below future expectations, with 39% describing their storage operations as highly sustainable under present conditions, according to survey responses.

That proportion rises to 61% when respondents assess where their
organizations expect storage sustainability to stand five years from now.

Funding levels also influence those expectations, with 70% of organizations holding sustainability budgets above $100 million expecting highly
sustainable operations within five years.

By comparison, 48% of organizations with annual sustainability budgets below $1 million anticipate reaching that same level during the period.

Training material, active datasets, model checkpoints and retained outputs
can impose substantially different infrastructure requirements throughout an AI systems lifecycle.

For organizations expanding AI operations, those differences make storage architecture, equipment lifespan, energy consumption and capacity planning increasingly interconnected decisions.

The survey does not establish that every organization will face identical costs, although its findings indicate that storage growth is widely anticipated. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/seagate-finds-ai-is-increasing-the-value-of-data -but-warns-that-43-of-businesses-lack-proper-data-storage-infrastructure-99-ex pect-ai-storage-and-storage-costs-to-explode


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