CITI SEES AI DRIVING 53% SURGE IN ENTERPRISE SSD DEMAND IN 2027 Citi expects enterprise SSD demand to grow 52.9% YoY in 2027 and another 41% in 2028 as AI inference, continual learning and Nvidia’s KV-cache offloading drive much larger storage requirements closer to GPUs. The bank sees total SSD demand rising 45% in 2027, with QLC-based near-GPU storage gaining adoption as AI systems increasingly need large, fast storage pools next to accelerators. Citi expects NAND demand to grow 29% in 2027 and 33% in 2028, versus supply growth of just 21% and 25%, as memory makers prioritize DRAM and HBM capacity. That could push the NAND supply-demand deficit from 0.8% in 2026 to 6.1% in 2027 and 5.5% in 2028. 22-SEP-2026 06:14 AM ET