In the past year, a super cycle of storage, referred to by institutions as the "strongest in history," swept across the globe. The demand for DRAM from AI servers is 8 to 10 times that of traditional servers, and global tech giants are expected to spend up to 650 billion dollars on AI infrastructure capital expenditures by 2026. In this wave, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology have become the three leaders of the "global tsunami-level AI bull market," with Micron and SanDisk continuously reaching historical highs, while Hynix and Kioxia are also constantly setting new records.

The A-share market is equally hot. On June 17, Shannon Chip Creation was the first to seal a 20cm limit up, driving the entire storage chip sector to collectively explode.

Interestingly, almost on the same day, across the ocean, James Kurz, Chief Financial Officer of the Filecoin Foundation, appeared on Schwab Network’s flagship closing show, "Market On Close," and presented a judgment that is being underestimated by the market to mainstream American investors:

The next bottleneck for AI infrastructure may not be chips or electricity, but rather the mobility and long-term storage of data.

If the storage chips that the stock market is frantically buying are the "hardware storage" of AI; then what James Kurz wants to talk about is another severely undervalued track—verifiable "on-chain storage." In the same AI storage super cycle, Wall Street bets on Micron, while Web3 has Filecoin.

This is not an internal AMA of the crypto circle, nor is it a niche Web3 podcast.

The Schwab Network is operated by one of America's largest brokerages, Charles Schwab's media company. "Market On Close" is its flagship daily finance show that broadcasts live from Wall Street and Chicago Monday through Friday, covering content across the Schwab platform, thinkorswim, YouTube, and multiple streaming channels, targeting investors and traders focusing on U.S. stocks, the tech industry, and capital markets.

In simple terms, this is the financial giant's own financial live streaming network and flagship closing program. Being able to sit in this chair itself is a kind of "pass"—the story of Filecoin is already being taken seriously by the mainstream financial world.

"Data Gravity": The Invisible Headwind of AI Mega Infrastructure

The theme of the show is incisive—"Data Gravity: The Headwind to the AI Buildout."

James Kurz's core point hits the blind spot that the entire AI industry is most unwilling to face:

What truly holds back AI is an "invisible bottleneck." Everyone is focused on GPUs, on computing power, on electricity, but neglecting that—data itself is becoming increasingly "heavy."

As the scale of data expands to a certain level, transporting, scheduling, and migrating the data itself becomes an enormous cost and obstacle. The larger, more important, and more sensitive the data, the more "immobile" it becomes; while computing power, applications, and services must ultimately be rearranged around the data. This is the essence of "data gravity."

What's sharper is: today's AI is built on a series of "data deserts." Computing power can be stacked indefinitely, but the storage foundation that supports it has seriously lagged. And the training, reasoning, and memory of AI require vast, reliable, long-term storable, and verifiable data layers—which is precisely the most undervalued and scarce link at present.

In one sentence: GPUs determine how fast AI computes, while data infrastructure determines whether AI has something to compute, can continue learning, and can still be verified years later.

A Clear Signal: FIL Has Entered the Mainstream View of Traditional Finance

Thus, the signal released by James Kurz this time is very clear. When the entire market is counting GPUs, Filecoin has already been placed on the "AI era foundational infrastructure candidate" table, and this is in the mainstream view of traditional finance.

In the past, external perceptions of Filecoin were often locked into "a decentralized storage project in the crypto world." But when the CFO of FF stands in Charles Schwab's studio, using language that Wall Street understands, and anchors Filecoin's value to the most core pain points of AI mega infrastructure, the story changes completely: this is no longer a story for the crypto circle but one for the entire AI industry and mainstream capital markets.

Chips Enable AI to Think, Filecoin Allows AI to Have Memory

Putting this appearance back into Filecoin's consistent mainline narrative reveals its true strength:

① The world's largest decentralized storage network. This is not a vision on a PPT, but a real capacity and computing power foundation that is already in operation.

② Permanent storage = AI's "memory." The stronger AI becomes, the more it needs vast, trustworthy, immutable, and long-term retrievable data. This is Filecoin's main stage.

③ A solution that directly addresses "data gravity." When data becomes "immovable," the answer is not a more expensive centralized cloud, but a distributed architecture that brings storage closer to the data and returns data sovereignty to the network.

④ Moving from Web3 to the real world. The appearance of FF executives on mainstream financial media itself is a symbolic step in validating Filecoin’s value proposition in the traditional financial world.

The most powerful part of this narrative is that it has transitioned from a macro story to the level of products, developers, and real business needs.

In March 2026, Filecoin Onchain Cloud officially launched on the mainnet, positioned as a programmable storage and payment layer for developers. Its official key scenarios directly highlight AI:

• Persistent data for AI Agents, execution logs, and generated products;
• Datasets, model checkpoints, and processing records in AI data pipelines.

What does this mean?

For AI Agents, they can autonomously complete data storage, retrieval, and payments without credit cards or centralized accounts; for AI developers, when data is processed, by whom it is processed, and whether it has been tampered with will leave an auditable, immutable on-chain record.

At the same time, Filecoin's latest ecological funding direction has also clearly listed these AI products as a focus:

• Long-term memory for AI Agents;
• Immutable audit logs;
• Provenance proofs for AI training data;
• Data compliance products for AI teams.

Filecoin's AI layout is transitioning from "talking about narratives" to "making products."

Filecoin is Moving Towards a Larger Battlefield

When mainstream U.S. financial media begins to seriously discuss "data gravity" and "permanent storage bottlenecks," the strongest narrative of Filecoin is also coming to the surface:

Filecoin is not just saving data for Web3. It has the opportunity to become the underlying data infrastructure for AI development in the real world.

• From a Web3 storage network to verifiable cloud;
• From human-uploaded files to AI Agents autonomously calling data;
• From self-narratives within the crypto industry to the AI infrastructure issues that traditional finance is paying attention to.

The next trillion-level infrastructure competition for AI may not only occur between GPUs and electricity but also between the storage, verification, and flow of global data.

The stock market is scrambling for the "short-term elasticity" of storage chips, while Filecoin is betting on the "long-term conclusion" of AI storage.

This time, it is not Web3 talking to itself, but Wall Street's lens actively turning towards decentralized storage.

The stars and seas of AI need a sufficiently broad and solid foundation. And Filecoin is becoming the answer that the world sees.

Video source: Schwab Network "Market On Close,"https://schwabnetwork.com/video/data-gravity-the-headwind-to-the-ai-buildout aired on June 17, 2026, guest James Kurz (CFO of Filecoin Foundation). This article is a media public relations piece, with core viewpoints organized according to the program's content; storage industry market data is sourced from public financial reports.