Storage Shortage May Cause AI Delays For Enterprises
Networkworld, Monday, January 26th, 2026
Enterprises are facing storage shortages, long lead times, and dramatic price increases, which may cause some to defer on-prem AI projects.
Enterprises are seeing jumps in storage prices that started last year and will extend into 2026, researchers predict, due to unprecedented demand related to AI deployments and the growth in data in general. As a result, some enterprises may defer on-prem AI projects for a few months until availability increases and prices stabilize.
'Storage needs are always expanding,' says Falko Kuester, engineering professor at UC San Diego and the director of Open Heritage 3D, a non-profit project that collects images, videos, LIDAR, point clouds, and other scans of historic sites and shares them with the public and with the research community.