Seagate has begun shipping its new 32TB hard drives to channel and retail partners worldwide, using its appearance at Intersec 2026 in Dubai to underline how large-capacity storage is being positioned to support the growing use of AI-driven video analytics. The company’s SkyHawk AI, Exos, and IronWolf Pro product lines are central to that message, reflecting a broader industry shift toward handling far larger volumes of video data at both the edge and in centralized environments.
Video image analytics is becoming a major source of data growth as organizations layer AI tools on top of existing camera systems. According to IDC, more than three-quarters of organizations expect their video data volumes to at least double within five years, driven by the addition of metadata, summaries, and automated annotations to raw footage. These changes are expanding the role of video beyond passive recording, turning it into a source of operational and compliance-related insight across sectors such as retail, transportation, smart cities, and critical infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, Seagate is using Intersec to emphasize the availability of 32TB drives across its core portfolios. The company frames these products as a response to practical storage pressures rather than a shift in architecture, arguing that higher-capacity hard drives remain a cost-effective way to scale storage for AI workloads. The same capacity roadmap used in large cloud deployments is now being offered more broadly to enterprises operating hybrid and multi-cloud environments, where video data must often be retained for long periods and searched efficiently.
Seagate executives describe video as evolving into a form of searchable business intelligence, with implications for how organizations investigate incidents, automate alerts, and analyze daily operations. That evolution, however, depends on having enough storage close to where data is generated and in the data center, particularly as edge devices produce increasingly rich datasets. Without sufficient capacity, the usefulness of AI-powered video analytics can be limited by retention constraints and data bottlenecks.
The 32TB SkyHawk AI drive is positioned for AI-enabled network video recorders and edge security systems, while IronWolf Pro targets high-capacity NAS deployments used by small and mid-sized businesses, creative professionals, and on-premises AI workloads. Exos, meanwhile, is aimed at cloud and enterprise data centers where density and power efficiency remain priorities. All three drives rely on conventional magnetic recording technology and carry five-year limited warranties, aligning them with enterprise expectations around durability and support.
Availability for the 32TB models begins January 14 through authorized partners worldwide, with recommended pricing ranging from just under $700 to just under $850 depending on the product line. Seagate representatives are presenting these offerings at Intersec 2026, where the discussion centers less on novelty and more on how storage capacity underpins the expanding role of AI in video analytics.
