Western Digital Anticipates $100M Productivity Boost from AI, Plans Soft Spin in October

Western Digital expects $100 productivity benefit from AI; 'soft-spin' likely in October

Western Digital (WDC) said the AI boom has helped boost SSD demand, while separately noting that the company's 'soft- spin' is expected in early October. Rob Soderbery, executive vice president and general manager of Flash Business unit at Western Digital, was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference on Tuesday and responded to questions on the company-split, AI and future growth, among other things. Soderbery said the company's current pricing guidance reflects general slowdown weakness in the transactional market. End markets softness is causing conservatism in the transactional channels, and it affects things which are consumer facing. However, he noted that the AI boom has helped. "The AI boom hit the SSD business squarely, and we caught the big wave in March-April of this year and that continues to power forward and that continues to be a ton of demand around the SSD in particular moving to high capacity," said Soderbery. The executive noted that mobile has been doing better than PC. Mobile vendors have been more precise in going after AI-enabled device opportunity. On the question of how Western Digital is using AI, Soderbery noted that the company has a major program, to leverage AI and machine learning within the engineering section. "For us we are probably heading down a two-year path to take a $100M of productivity and deploy it in other places based on the benefits of AI and ML." commented Soderbery. The executive also talked about the splitting of the company's businesses. Western Digital plans to split into two publicly traded companies during the second half of this year, with one focusing on hard disk drives, or HDD, and the other on flash memory. Soderbery said the company will be going through the "soft-spin" -- which has been practiced internally -- in early October. "The separation does give us a chance to be more articulate about what we are going to do with Flash, as well as be more focused in harnessing the company's energy behind the Flash Business and the HDD business," added Soderbery.

Western Digital expects $100M productivity benefit from AI; 'soft-spin' likely in October

Western Digital (WDC) said the AI boom has helped boost SSD demand, while separately noting that the company's 'soft- spin' is expected in early October. Rob Soderbery, executive vice president and general manager of Flash Business unit at Western Digital, was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference on Tuesday and responded to questions on the company-split, AI and future growth, among other things. Soderbery said the company's current pricing guidance reflects general slowdown weakness in the transactional market. End markets softness is causing conservatism in the transactional channels, and it affects things which are consumer facing. However, he noted that the AI boom has helped. "The AI boom hit the SSD business squarely, and we caught the big wave in March-April of this year and that continues to power forward and that continues to be a ton of demand around the SSD in particular moving to high capacity," said Soderbery. The executive noted that mobile has been doing better than PC. Mobile vendors have been more precise in going after AI-enabled device opportunity. On the question of how Western Digital is using AI, Soderbery noted that the company has a major program, to leverage AI and machine learning within the engineering section. "For us we are probably heading down a two-year path to take a $100M of productivity and deploy it in other places based on the benefits of AI and ML," commented Soderbery. The executive also talked about the splitting of the company's businesses. Western Digital plans to split into two publicly traded companies during the second half of this year, with one focusing on hard disk drives, or HDD, and the other on flash memory. Soderbery said the company will be going through the "soft-spin" -- which has been practiced internally -- in early October. "The separation does give us a chance to be more articulate about what we are going to do with Flash, as well as be more focused in harnessing the company's energy behind the Flash Business and the HDD business," added Soderbery.