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U.S. CSPs have recently upgraded their enterprise SSD demand forecasts over the past two weeks, according to TrendForce’s research. This shift is mainly driven by major CSPs speeding up deployments and expanding enterprise SSD use across more applications. Notably, this demand increase isn't confined to high-performance TLC products; QLC products, known for their superior cost efficiency and capacity, have become a significant growth catalyst.
Recent procurement momentum suggests that total enterprise SSD orders in the fourth quarter could surpass the already elevated levels seen in 3Q26, maintaining a strong upward trajectory. This has given NAND Flash suppliers greater control over capacity allocation and pricing in the enterprise segment, while further supporting continued increases in enterprise SSD prices.
AI applications expand and evolve, from agentic AI in North America to KV cache offloading in China
TrendForce notes that the drivers of enterprise SSD demand have expanded beyond the initial focus on LLM training toward more concrete AI applications. As agentic AI systems become increasingly prevalent, demand for massive volumes of real-time data retrieval and caching is growing rapidly.
Meanwhile, QLC storage is also seeing broader adoption in vector databases, where its combination of high capacity and cost efficiency makes it well suited to storing large volumes of unstructured data. Looking ahead, wider adoption of agentic AI is expected to further increase QLC enterprise SSD penetration across North American cloud and data center applications.
In China, AI architectures led by DeepSeek are promoting the use of high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs for KV cache offloading. By selectively offloading cached data from memory to high-speed, high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs, these architectures can improve model inference efficiency at a lower cost. This approach could drive broader adoption of QLC enterprise SSDs in the Chinese market going forward.
