Are these the picks and shovels?

Is the profitability of these electronics manufacturers more likely than the companies that are buying up all their future inventory?

▲

smashface 5 hours ago | parent [-]

If AI continues at this trajectory, sure, likely to the picks and shovels.

If AI has a bubble burst, you could see a lot of used hardware flood the market and then companies like WD could have a hard time selling against their previous inventory.

▲

mrweasel 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is more likely that companies like WD doesn't know if this will be a bubble or not. Currently they can milk the market by raising their prices and just rely on their current production facilities, maybe expand a little. If there's going to be crash, then it's better to have raised the price, even if just temporarily, rather than being left standing with excessive production capacity.

If it's long term, it would be better to be the front runner on additional capacity, but that's assuming continuous growth. If it all comes down, or even just plateaus, it's better to simply raise prices.

▲

trueismywork 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Given how hard AI is on I/O, while restarting if hardware might go second hand. I dont see hard drives go second hand. Most hardware that we get might be used beyond redeeming even at free price.

▲

digiown 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think the HDDs are being used for any intensive loads. They have too much latency for most of that. It's probably just archival storage for their scraped content and generated slop.

▲

zozbot234 3 hours ago | parent [-]

For "cold" archival storage you would want to use tape, which is far cheaper per TB at scale.

▲

digiown 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't mean that type of archive, but rather "just in case" data like "last month's scrape of this website" after we scraped it 5 more times this month or higher resolution versions of book scans. You might want to still be able to dump it out quickly if you need it. Money is no object for these companies and the cost of HDDs is more than low enough for the flexibility they provide.

▲

pixl97 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If demand for hard drives is this high then it sounds like there wouldn't be near enough tape around either.

	▲	Fnoord an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is why I am buying a couple of LTO 6 tapes. Thus far I've been able to buy 4 for approx 120 EUR, 2,5 TB each. They have been around 30 EUR each the past years, and still are approx such price (leaning towards 35 EUR though). I bought a second hand drive for about 500 EUR, and a HBA for it.