Does every company need to be an AI company now?

I’m sorry, the old, non AI-focused brand identity can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, because it’s dead.

As AI startups flood the market with catchy “.ai” domains and flashy product offerings, older tech companies that were once critical to the rise of cloud computing and the internet are also entering the space through rebrands and more AI-focused business propositions. But can that strategy translate into new glory days?

You’ve changed. At Western Digital’s 2026 Innovation Day event in New York City, CEO Irving Tan said the company’s rebrand to WD, along with its new logo, were steps in its transition to become a more “data-centric company” critical to AI projects.

“That’s who we are: a data center company that’s at the heart of AI and cloud today and going forward,” Tan said of the company once largely known as a storage device manufacturer. In its succeeding Q2 2026 earnings call, Tan said that WD, which reported $3 billion in revenue in the quarter, had already sold out of its hard disk drives for the 2026 calendar year thanks to hefty storage demands from AI companies.

WD isn’t the only company turning a new identity leaf. Rackspace Technology, once a pioneer in the cloud hosting industry, has also repositioned itself for the AI boom. In 2023, it launched a new global practice called Foundry by AI by Rackspace (FAIR) dedicated to helping businesses with their AI strategy. In its first year, FAIR—now known as Rackspace AI Solutions—completed more than 40 global AI implementations for companies across industries like real estate and education.

“Rackspace is catching the next wave of market growth with AI. Over the past year, we have transformed into an AI-ready organization,” former Rackspace CEO Amar Maletira said as part of a statement on the one-year anniversary of the launch of FAIR.

What to make of this. Dave McCarthy, program VP and global lead of cloud and infrastructure services at IDC, told IT Brew that compute, networking, and storage are the “three-legged stool” needed to support AI infrastructure. While there was a heavy focus on the “compute” piece in the early days of AI, McCarthy said storage and networking companies are realizing the value they can provide in this new era.

“I feel like you’re seeing all of these storage companies realize that they have an important part to play,” McCarthy said in an interview at IDC Directions 2026. “So, while it might sound at the surface like AI-washing…It’s really important to complete the story.”

“In fact, we’ll probably continue to see networking companies also rebrand themselves as AI companies just because they’re all gearing up for this next set of workloads,” he added.

Upper hand? In a saturated market, McCarthy said traditional cloud and storage players may find their existing consumer base helpful in establishing their new reputation.

“Some of those existing companies may be able to be successful in saying, ‘We bring the history. We bring the legacy. You trust us, and we can move you into this new world,’” McCarthy said.

While newer entrants in the AI industry may not have a deep bench of enterprise customers they can lean on like their seasoned counterparts, their newness gives them a competitive edge.

“They can say, ‘We’re not bringing the legacy baggage of what happened before. We’re going to design ourselves specifically for AI, so we’re not that old thing trying to be new,’” McCarthy said.

Does every company need to be an AI company now? In the age where investors are “chasing AI headlines,” Prakash Darji, general manager of the digital experience business unit at Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), said it’s now essential for public companies to embrace the budding technology.

“If you’re a public company, and you stick your head in the sand saying, ‘AI is bad,’ you’re gonna get crucified,” Darjin said. “You’ll get fired as a CEO.”

However, Dave Meister, VP of MSP at Check Point Software, told IT Brew that the wheat will soon separate from the tares.

“You’ll start to see organizations who can keep up with the changes, and organizations who are going to slowly fall away,” Meister said. “And this happens with every large technological change. AI is just the most recent one, and will probably be the biggest one that we’ll face.”