There’s something both fascinating and deeply troubling about watching an industry cannibalize itself in real-time. This week, I came across news that data centers are now hoarding SSDs because hard drive supplies are drying up. It’s one of those stories that on the surface seems like just another tech industry supply chain hiccup, but when you dig deeper, it reveals something more fundamental about where we’re heading with AI.

The sheer scale of what’s happening is mind-boggling. Data centers aren’t just buying a few extra drives for redundancy—they’re stockpiling storage at unprecedented rates to support AI workloads. And because traditional hard drives can’t keep up with demand, they’re pivoting to SSDs en masse. But here’s the kicker: to keep costs down, many are opting for QLC NAND drives over the more durable TLC variants. Translation? They’re choosing cheaper, less reliable storage because even with billions being thrown around, they’re still trying to contain costs.