One of the world's largest HDD makers is investing in exotic storage that can store hundreds of terabytes of data on a thumbnail-size drive

• Western Digital invests in Cerabyte to advance permanent ceramic data storage
• Cerabyte targets exabyte-scale storage without power or maintenance requirements
• Pure Storage and In-Q-Tel previously backed Cerabyte’s long-term storage aims

We’ve written about Cerabyte a number of times previously. The startup is working to solve the problem of long-term data storage by taking a leaf from the ancient Egyptians, replacing chisels and stone with femtosecond lasers and ceramic.

Its system inscribes data in QR code-like patterns onto ceramic nanolayers, a medium that can last thousands of years without needing power to preserve the stored contents.

Cerabyte aims to establish a new tier of permanent, sustainable storage at petabyte to exabyte scale. The technology avoids issues like bit rot and silent corruption, offering an immutable record of the original data.

WD is the latest investor

Western Digital is the latest company to make a strategic investment in Cerabyte to help accelerate the technology's development.

“We are looking forward to working with Cerabyte to formulate a technology partnership for the commercialization of this technology," said Shantnu Sharma, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Western Digital. "Our investment in Cerabyte aligns with our priority of extending the reach of our products further into long-term data storage use cases.”

Cerabyte’s prototype, built with standard parts, already delivers megabyte-per-second read and write speeds and gigabyte-scale capacity. Storage is handled via robotic cartridges inside library racks, designed for compatibility with standard data center infrastructure.

“Our ceramic data storage offers a vital, complementary long-term data storage layer that ensures rapid data retrieval - often within seconds - unlocking new revenue streams,” said Christian Pflaum, co-founder and CEO of Cerabyte. “We are excited to be working with Western Digital to define a technology partnership, fueling our ability to deliver accessible permanent storage solutions at scale.”

The company expects to grow from a 1PB rack pilot to 100PB by 2030, with access times falling below 10 seconds and throughput exceeding 1GB/s.

Western Digital joins Pure Storage, and the CIA-backed In-Q-Tel VC in investing in Cerabyte’s long-term storage vision.

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