According to Seagate, the investment will generate a number of highly skilled jobs within the R&D and manufacturing sectors.
Mass data storage provider Seagate Technology Holdings has announced a major investment of £100m into a five-year R&D project out of its Derry, Northern Ireland facility. The investment is supported by Invest NI, which contributed an additional £15m, as Seagate aims to further develop its own technology and grow the local economy.
Established in 1979 and headquartered in Fremont, California, Seagate has a number of global locations in the US, Europe and Asia. The organisation manufactures electronic storage devices and offers companies a range of data services.
According to Seagate, the investment will generate at least 30 highly skilled jobs within the R&D and manufacturing sectors, as well as expand the local supplier ecosystem via the sourcing of materials and labour from the local community. The organisation has stated that the investment will boost Northern Ireland’s international competitiveness and position as a global hub for innovation.
An area of key interest for Seagate and one it intends to further explore is photonics, which looks at the generation, detection and manipulation of light, for use across a range of applications such as data communications, AR, VR and consumer electronics, among others.
Commenting on the investment news, John Morris, the CTO of Seagate Technology, said: “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. 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 center of excellence, producing over a quarter of the world’s recording heads and pioneering semiconductor laser R&D, critical for next-generation hard drives. With Invest NI’s support, we’re accelerating the development of 60TB and beyond capacities, laying the foundation for achieving 100 TB drives,” he added.
“This project will expand our global engineering expertise and reinforce our long-standing commitment to innovation in Northern Ireland.”
There has been a recent push to expand Northern Ireland’s capabilities in the science and technology sectors. As part of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, both industries recently received a financial investment of £30m. The funding will be allocated by local leaders in a range of relevant sectors.
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