Western Digital Stock Slips Friday: What's Happening?

Shares of Western Digital Corp . (NASDAQ: WDC ) are trading lower Friday afternoon as storage and semiconductor equities faced broad-based selling following a software efficiency breakthrough from AI developer DeepSeek . Here’s what investors need to know .

Western Digital shares are experiencing downward pressure.

Why is WDC stock trading lower?

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Model Sparks Hardware Efficiency Anxieties

The sector-wide downturn stems from the release of DeepSeek’s V4.1 Flash model, which dramatically reduces hardware overhead by requiring just one-quarter of the High Bandwidth Memory capacity and one-eighth of the SSD storage compared to previous model iterations. The steep reduction sparked concerns across Wall Street that if rival AI developers replicate similar algorithmic optimizations across global large...