Platinum demand boosted by AI-driven growth in nearline data storage

As worldwide demand for data centre storage continues to grow, Toshiba is investing to expand its hard disk drive (HDD) business. It aims to nearly double annual production capacity by its full financial full year 2027 compared with its full financial year 2025 on a storage-capacity basis.
Toshiba’s expansion is focused on nearline HDDs. Nearline HDD capacity is used in enterprise, cloud, and hyperscale environments for data that does not need constant, real-time access, but must remain quickly available.
In the storage market, surging AI demand has created an HDD shortage, with supply largely committed through to the end of the year. This sustained demand has eliminated typical seasonal downturns and kept manufacturing lines running at full capacity. To secure fast-growing storage requirements, major cloud customers are considering extending long-term agreements with HDD suppliers through to 2028. This move both prolongs the HDD product lifecycle and secures future output volumes.
For full year 2026, electrical demand for platinum is forecast to grow by 19% year-on-year to 118 koz, boosted by AI-related demand, including HDDs, which are comprised of magnetic platters coated with a platinum alloy media to improve thermal and magnetic stability.