Seagate Technology, a $40bn data storage company based out of California has announced plans to invest £100m in an R&D project in Northern Ireland.
The project will see the company invest in nano-photonic innovation, essentially state-of-the-art hard drives to support industrial-scale data storage in the era of AI.
The five-year plan will take place in Seagate’s Londonderry site and has been backed by an additional £15m from Invest NI, the region’s local economic development agency.
“In today’s AI-driven world, data volume isn’t just growing—the value of data is evolving as organisations rethink what it takes to train AI models and retain new, highly valuable data,” said John Morris, chief technology officer at Seagate.
“To unlock data’s full potential, we need storage solutions that are not only massive in capacity but engineered for reliability, durability, and scale.
“That’s exactly what this investment enables. Our Northern Ireland facility is a global centre of excellence, producing over a quarter of the world’s recording heads and pioneering semiconductor laser R&D—critical for next-generation hard drives.”
Seagate has said its combined investment with Invest NI will create new local high-skilled jobs in the region and boost Northern Ireland’s international competitiveness as a hub for data innovation.
“We have worked very closely with Seagate over the past three decades and have helped the facility here evolve into a world-leading manufacturing and pioneering R&D Centre,” said Kieran Donoghue, chief executive at Invest NI.
“This puts Northern Ireland at the forefront of the company’s innovation plans and will enable it to ramp up productivity through state-of the-art equipment.
“The Seagate and Invest NI teams will now work together to ensure the successful implementation of this major investment.”