‘AI inevitably calls customers’ attention to the fragmented state of their data caused by their disparate data storage infrastructure. Data stored on widely diverse platforms, with different operating and management systems, which are siloed and individually managed, are unable to feed real-time data to AI inference engines. The Pure Storage platform strategy provides a unified and integrated data storage and delivery system across customers’ various data environments,’ says Pure Storage CEO Charles Giancarlo.

Pure Storage is seeing early success from artificial intelligence opportunities for its flash storage technology, and expects AI to drive an increasingly major part of its business thanks to the company’s unified storage platform.

Pure Storage CEO Charles Giancarlo Wednesday told analysts on the company’s first fiscal quarter 2025 quarterly financial analyst conference call that recent advances in AI have opened up multiple opportunities for the company in several market segments.

These include the high-performance data storage market for large public or private GPU farms, specialized storage for enterprise inference engine or RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) environments, and upgrading all enterprise storage to perform as a storage cloud to simplify data access and management and eliminate data silos to enable easier data access for AI, Giancarlo said.

[Related: Pure Storage CEO: ‘The Days Of Hard Disks Are Coming To An End’]

“Pure is seeing early success in all three of these AI-based opportunities, and we can address them all with our unified Purity platform,” he said. “Unlike other vendors, we do not require different operating systems software to address different storage needs.”

That single unified Purity storage platform is key to Pure Storage’s success in the AI business, Giancarlo said.

“AI inevitably calls customers’ attention to the fragmented state of their data caused by their disparate data storage infrastructure,” he said. “Data stored on widely diverse platforms, with different operating and management systems, which are siloed and individually managed, are unable to feed real-time data to AI inference engines. The Pure Storage platform strategy provides a unified and integrated data storage and delivery system across customers’ various data environments. It facilitates seamless management and data access across data centers and the cloud, with simplified universal policies and management.”

The hyperscaler cloud market is also turning out to be a significant opportunity for Pure Storage, Giancarlo said.

“The quantity and quality of our discussions with hyperscalers have advanced considerably this past quarter,” he said.

Pure Storage is also making a play for the hyperscaler storage market, where cloud providers have a broad range of storage environments including high-performance storage based on SSDs, multiple levels of lower-cost hard drive-based nearline storage, and tape-based offline storage, Giancarlo.

“We are in a unique position to provide our Purity and DirectFlash technology for both their high performance and their nearline environments, which make up the majority of their storage purchases,” he said. “Our most advanced engagements now include both testing and commercial discussions. As such, we continue to believe we will see a design win this year.”

Giancarlo said Pure Storage’s flash storage technology brings multiple advantages to hyperscaler infrastructure, including reduced power, space, and cooling requirements; a reduced need for sophisticated caching and other technologies that hyperscalers use to make up for the relatively low performance of hard drives; increased server performance by accelerating data delivery; and reduced costs thanks to improved storage reliability and longevity.

“Increased energy use is a major issue and cost for both hyperscalers and enterprise data centers,” he said. “This is even more important as introducing AI in data centers promises to consume ever greater amounts of power and cooling. Pure Storage can dramatically reduce the power usage in existing data centers by upwards of 20 percent, freeing significant power and cooling for AI workloads.”

Pure Storage is also seeing momentum in the enterprise market because of its cloud operating model, Giancarlo said.

“Enterprises want their data centers to operate the same way as cloud companies operate theirs,” he said. “Customers should be able to automate and manage storage as virtualized clouds of storage, whether located on-prem or in the cloud.”

As part of Pure Storage’s complete cloud operating model, the company’s Evergreen//One offering lets businesses consume storage as-a-service based entirely on guaranteed service level agreements so they can store data whenever and wherever needed with guaranteed reliability and performance, Giancarlo said.

Pure Storage also helps businesses develop enterprise hybrid cloud infrastructures providing the cloud-like self-service, flexibility, and agility from their private data center infrastructure, he said.

“It’s no longer only about price, performance and features,” he said. “Pure Fusion solves the complexity of traditional IT and storage by joining storage arrays into virtual storage pools. Managers can manage their entire fleet of arrays by policy, and are able to set up custom storage services for both IT and developers. Pure Fusion combines enterprise storage with a cloud operating model, cloud agility and scalability, and enables easier access to real-time data stores for applications such as AI.”

Giancarlo said Pure Storage did not see a significant change in the quarter’s overall macroenvironment or customers’ intentions to buy.

“While we have great enthusiasm for our opportunities in AI, spending on AI may put pressure on other parts of IT budgets,” he said. “We believe that the storage market will fare relatively well in this IT economy, but have yet to see a major inflection. Overall, we believe that we are well positioned in all of the segments we compete in, and we will continue to gain share across our markets. Our leadership position is now clearly demonstrated by our competitors’ increased fervor to mimic our strategy and our messages.”

Pure Storage By The Numbers

For its first fiscal quarter 2025, which ended May 5, Pure Storage reported revenue of $693.5 million, up 17.7 percent over the $589.3 million the company reported for its first fiscal quarter 2024.

This included product revenue of $347.4 million, up from last year’s $309.0 million, and subscription services revenue of $346.1 million, up from $280.3 million.

For the quarter, the company reported a GAAP net loss of $35.0 million or 11 cents per share, about half the net loss of $67.4 million or 22 cents per share it reported last year.

On a non-GAAP basis, Pure Storage reported net income of $107.3 million or 32 cents per share, up from last year’s $24.7 million or 8 cents per share.

Looking ahead, Pure Storage expects total revenue of $755 million, up from last year’s $688.7 million. The company also expects operating profit of $125 million, or operating margin of 16.6 percent. For all of fiscal 2025, Pure Storage reiterated its previous revenue and operating margin guidance.