[OC] AI boom fuels growth in data storage companies

[u/sometimes-yeah-okay]

Every tech boom has a few quiet winners. In the AI era, data storage companies are one of them.

Since the start of the AI boom, companies like Seagate pulling ahead with a ~$31.2B market cap in 2025, with Western Digital trailing but still riding the AI wave. From 2020 to 2025, data storage companies are seeing major gains as cloud providers and enterprises scrambled to store AI workloads and training datasets.

AI models don’t just need compute, they require tangible permanent storage. Traditional hard drives remain the cost-effective backbone for:

• Cloud storage expansion
• AI training data repositories
• Enterprise hybrid cloud setups
• Hyperscale data centers

It’s a reminder that storage demand doesn’t disappear when the training run ends—the data has to live somewhere.

Data sources: Yahoo Finance

Tools used: AVA Data Visualization

[u/The-original-spuggy]

why do people keep creating videos of graphs that can just be static?

[u/wons-noj → u/The-original-spuggy]

Just pause it at the end. I like it

[u/niknah → u/wons-noj]

How do you pause?
If it was a video instead of gif, you can rewind and pause it.

[u/The-original-spuggy → u/niknah]

Exactly. I would love to pause and skip to the end, but a gif i can't

[u/wons-noj → u/The-original-spuggy]

? I can pause it no problem. Refer to the picture the other reply has

[u/The-original-spuggy → u/wons-noj]

How do you pause a gif on Reddit?

[u/niknah → u/The-original-spuggy]

I figured out for desktops, right click on the image and pick "show controls"

[u/envybelmont → u/niknah]

To pause, just tap or click the pause button.

[u/The-original-spuggy → u/envybelmont]

I don’t have that option on my phone or computer

[u/envybelmont → u/The-original-spuggy]

I had to full screen the video. I’m also using the Reddit app for iOS for comparison. Weird that it wouldn’t present the player regardless, but I don’t know how this website is coded so
¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/envybelmont → u/envybelmont]

I had to full screen the video. I’m also using the Reddit app for iOS for comparison. Weird that it wouldn’t present the player regardless, but I don’t know how this website is coded so
¯\(ツ)/¯

[u/zanfar]

I don't understand why the icons are not represented in the legend; or why, if the legend is completely independent of the manufacturers in question, the colors are so similar.

Or the animation. It seems that a lot of "space" is wasted on things that don't improve visbility or comprehension.

[u/W0LFSTEN]

How is it that Western Digital lost 50% of their market cap in 2025, but that is completely absent from your video chart thing?

[u/The_Baron___]

Fascinating, I totally missed the news and the influence it had on these companies. I imagine Toshiba's new owners made the deal of the century if they kept operating/innovating.

[u/Fdr-Fdr]

Not wasting my time for another dull animation to run.