GoKawiilBack in February, we had the opportunity to attend WD's (formerly Western Digital) Innovation Day 2026, where the company outlined its plans for the future. Notably, the company discusses its split from SanDisk, and it's expectations for the future, including discussion around its HAMR roadmap, in addition to its ePMR discussions, and fielding questions from analysts.
Like many of our previous event transcripts, this is almost exactly what we heard at the press-only event. As such, some elements have been lightly edited for flow and clarity. If you have not had the chance to check out other Tom's Hardware Premium transcripts, be sure to check out our coverage from CES and GTC 2026.
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Ambrish Srivastava: I guess we have to go first with Amit in that case, so just a quick — we have mic runners, there's four of us, we'll start off with Amit, and then we'll queue up Aaron Rakers, right next to Amit. Ah, name and firm, please.
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Amit Daryanani: Thanks a lot; Amit Daryanani, Evercore. Thanks for the presentation. The two things that stood out, and I'd love to get your perspectives on this; one is the cost-per-bit decline—if you could just talk about how you are thinking about cost-per-bit declines over the next three to five years of the roadmap. Is that different in ePMR versus HAMR? Just, if you can walk through that math a little bit.
And then, Irving, for you, it seems like you want to commit towards an ePMR and a HAMR roadmap at least through 2028; if all customers care about is 'the highest capacity', 'the most reliable at scale', why have a dual technology roadmap when it seems like HAMR is going to work out? Just walk through the dynamic given what customers are asking for. Thank you.
Irving Tan: That sounded like more than one question, in one question. [laughing] So, let me try to address the cost-down question for a second. Obviously, you know, the cost down that was delivered, dollar per teraybte, has been about ten percent over the last few quarters. Obviously we're not guiding to anything beyond that, but more importantly, what you've heard Ahmed, even as we deliver a roadmap that has both HAMR and ePMR, the common platforming that we've done to ensure that it's common mechanicals, the fact that we've internalized our own laser capability, gives us the confidence that we'll be able to maintain a very competitive cost-down trajectory going forward.
In relation to the roadmap — and I think Ahmed, it's cool for you to join in — obviously what we want is to give our customers very smooth transitions, and you've heard how risk-adverse they are to transitions given the size and scale and the importance of storage to their business. So we'll continuously work with our customers to make sure that the economics work for them, the economics work for us. The reality is, as we go beyond, say 60, 70, we will have to transition to HAMR. As we get to 80, 90, 100 terabytes, there is — at some point, the laws of physics will require us to transition to HAMR, but we want to do it in a way that makes economic sense, that manages risk, gives our customers smooth transitions, AND equally important, makes economic sense for us, as well. The benefit we have is that we're able to do both whilst delivering the strong financial performance that Kris read off.
Ambrish Srivastava: I'm going to go to Aaron and after that we'll come to Erik over here.
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