SanDisk warning highlights NAND's widening cost gap with HDDs

DigiTimes reports that AI-related memory demand has driven NAND prices up by more than 20 times, while both flash and HDD suppliers remain cautious about adding capacity. SanDisk's view is that the price spread between NAND and hard drives weakens the near-term case for replacing HDD capacity with SSDs at scale. The market read-through is mixed. Strong AI storage demand supports NAND pricing, but the larger price gap also limits SSD substitution in bulk data-center storage. That could keep HDDs relevant for capacity tiers while NAND vendors focus on higher-value enterprise SSD and performance-sensitive workloads.