Storage Bottleneck Pressures Hyperscalers as AI Hardware Boom Widens

SanDisk's blowout earnings report is a major inflection point, signaling that the AI infrastructure boom is now fundamentally reshaping the entire hardware stack beyond GPUs. As AI models demand massive, high-speed storage, the market is quickly realizing that compute power alone is insufficient. This supply crunch for essential flash memory represents a critical expansion of the AI value chain, elevating storage from a commodity to a core strategic component for data center operations.

This dynamic directly pressures hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, who now face escalating costs and potential supply constraints for a critical resource. The pricing power is shifting to memory suppliers, which could erode cloud provider margins or slow the pace of new AI service deployments. This new reality forces a strategic reassessment of supply chains, potentially leading to costly long-term agreements or even vertical integration to secure the hardware underpinning the AI gold rush.