Storing the future: Redefining storage for the Al era

Seagate’s Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer B.S. Teh keynoted Reuters Momentum AI Asia 2025 conference on September 17 in Singapore.

He reminded the audience that across the millennia, data has powered breakthrough innovation and technology. “Every wave of prosperity has been data-driven,” he said.

Still true today in that “AI doesn’t exist without data.” What’s different now is the scale, speed and potential intelligence we can unlock if we store data right, he said.

AI accelerating at blistering speeds

But the challenge is “AI is really accelerating at blistering speeds.” He illustrated that acceleration with this timeline:

• When PCs still reigned 20 years ago, the world generated less than one zettabyte (ZB) of data a year.
• In the mobile-cloud era just five years ago, the amount had grown to 72ZB a year.
• Now with the prevalence of AI, the volume of data forecast for 2029 is 527ZB.

Reflecting this exponential growth are the nearly 12,000 data centers throughout the world. “That’s one for every three Starbucks,” he said.

Not stopping there, tech giants are committing billions and billions of dollars to build even more data centers.

“Hard drives continue to be the most cost effective and the only storage technology that has the scale to store the data,” he said.

Responsibility to innovate

Keeping up with unprecedented demand for storage will come only through innovation, a responsibility that Seagate embraces, he said.

“AI can replicate software quickly, but it cannot replicate the [hardware] infrastructure” that Seagate continues to invest in and manufacture, he said.

He noted that early next year the company will ship hard drives with an industry-leading capacity of 40 terabytes (TB) built on innovative Mozaic™ technology.

Roadmap to 100TB hard drives

Teh compared these advanced 40TB Mozaic drives to conventional 24TB drives. The larger capacity means that 25,000 units can do the job of 42,000. For data centers, that bigger payload offers significant savings in space and power.

He pointed to Mozaic as the future-proof foundation for AI. “There is a plan and a clear road map” for the company to go from 40TB to 100TB per drive, he said.