Seagate Technology may be a more direct way than Apple to bet on AI hardware demand. Data center customers took 90% of the capacity Seagate shipped in the September quarter, and long-term supply agreements through calendar 2028 allocate most of its data center capacity. Prices for 2028 are not yet set. Seagate expects December quarter revenue of $4.8 billion, plus or minus $100 million, after $4.2 billion in the September quarter. Its operating margin reached 48.9% in the quarter ended October 2, 2026, up from 26.9% a year earlier. Apple expects December quarter revenue growth of 7% to 10%, limited by memory shortages. It expects gross margin of 45% to 46%, down from 47.9%, on higher memory costs. Seagate trades at 26.3 times earnings, against 38.7 for Apple. Its next report, expected in January 2027, will show whether its margin holds.

Seagate has revived the hybrid drive, which pairs a large hard disk drive (HDD) with a smaller solid-state drive (SSD) and presents them as one storage pool. The approach fell out of favour in the 2010s as flash storage got cheaper. Its Alkemi intelligent storage platform manages the pool from the enclosure rather than the operating system. Seagate says Alkemi learns usage over time, keeping high-demand content on the SSD while the HDD holds growing libraries. The old maths holds again in 2026: NAND flash is fast but costly, while mechanical drives remain cheaper per TB. Apple's 2012 Fusion Drive was fragile; if one of its two drives failed, recovery was difficult. Seagate's data sheet calls Alkemi a two-tier system but does not say whether it uses caching or automated tiering.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc today launched the FireCuda Forge, its first hard drive powered by the new Alkemi intelligent storage platform. The drive combines solid-state drive (SSD) speed with hard disk drive (HDD) capacity in one unit. Alkemi learns how data is used and keeps frequently accessed content on the user's SSD, while the HDD holds larger libraries. Users supply their own NVMe SSD. Read and write speeds reach 2,500MB/s and 2,000MB/s, and the drive connects through USB4. The Forge is available now in 8TB and 20TB versions, priced from $699 and $899. It supports Windows 11 and macOS 26 and above. "For years, external storage has forced users to choose: speed or scale," said Lance Ohara, vice president of Edge IoT Marketing at Seagate.