Citi issued a forecast that demand for enterprise solid-state drives, storage chips used in data centers, will jump 52.9% in 2027, attributing the surge to continued AI infrastructure spending. The estimate adds to a string of recent projections tying storage and memory demand directly to AI data center construction rather than general enterprise IT refresh cycles.
The forecast arrives as commentary elsewhere argues that AMD's climb to a $1 trillion market valuation reflects the same underlying dynamic: chipmakers benefiting from sustained AI capital spending rather than a speculative bubble. Together, the two data points describe a hardware supply chain, from storage to processors, that is being reshaped by AI demand projections stretching years into the future.
What remains unproven is whether actual AI data center buildout will match the pace these forecasts assume; a slowdown in AI capital expenditure announcements from major cloud providers would undercut both the eSSD demand estimate and the valuation logic behind AMD's climb.