Data storage firm Seagate is working to develop a 100-terabyte hard drive by 2030, touting blistering demand from data centers for the 70-year-old technology in the artificial intelligence boom.

BS Teh, Seagate’s chief commercial officer, told CNBC that the company is aiming to launch such a drive — which would have about three times the capacity of the firm’s top-of-the-line hard drives — by 2030. The largest hard disk drive Seagate currently produces is the 36-terabyte Exos M model, which it launched in January.

“You may be thinking, ‘Who would need it?'” Teh said, referring to the idea of a 100-terabyte hard drive. “Well, plenty.”

“I think there’s definitely strong demand,” he added. “This is a key enabler for the industry to be able to deliver the storage capacity that the market needs, because there’s no other technology that’s able to produce this capacity of storage technology to meet the growth that the market needs.”

Seagate has been touting itself as more of an AI player in recent years amid the rise of foundational models like those being developed by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google. In the computer hardware market, the AI boom has largely benefited players like Nvidia which make the graphics processing units needed for training and running AI models.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi last week told employees “it is what it is” at a heated all-hands meeting after the company announced it would increase its in-office requirements and change benefits.

The ride-sharing company informed employees on April 28 that they will be required to come into the office three days a week, up from two, starting in June, CNBC reported. Uber also changed the eligibility for its month-long paid sabbatical benefit, raising the requirement from five years at the company to eight years. The company also informed some employees who had been previously approved for remote work that they would be required to start coming in.

Khosrowshahi defended the policy changes against feisty employees who peppered him with questions and criticism at the company meeting and on Uber’s internal forum, according to audio and correspondence obtained by CNBC. 

“If you’re here for a sabbatical and this change causes you to change your mind, it is what it is,” Khosrowshahi told employees at the April 29 all-hands meeting. “I’m sorry about that. The reason we want you to be here is the impact on the company. The learning here. We recognize some of these changes are going to be unpopular with folks. This is a risk we decided to take.”

The clash inside Uber highlights the growing tension between tech workers and tech management. Workers for years were drawn to Silicon Valley for its idealistic values, perks and job security, but since 2022, tech companies have cut back on benefits and conducted on-going rounds of layoffs.

Google, for example, informed some employees who were previously approved for remote work that they needed to return to the office if they want to avoid getting caught in layoffs, CNBC reported last month.  

Being in person more frequently is better for collaboration, innovation and company culture, Uber told CNBC in a statement.

“It’s hardly a surprise that not everyone was thrilled about changes to remote work and sabbatical policies,” the company said. “But the job of leadership is to do what’s in the best interest of our customers and shareholders.”

After Uber announced the changes in a memo last week, employees flooded the company’s internal Slido forum with questions and comments.

“The Slido essentially has been invaded by questions about the changes we’ve made,” Khosrowshahi said at the beginning of meeting, adding that the questions had been consolidated.

“How is five years of service not a tenured employee? Especially when burnout is rampant in the org,” a highly-rated comment from one employee said, adding that they had already paid for a trip for their upcoming sabbatical.

Khosrowshahi said Uber is a “Gen-AI powered company” that needs to be on its A game. He said employees should be more interested in learning and their impact on the company than on its benefits, which spurred more employee pushback.

Some questions asked if Uber made policy changes in hopes that it would force some people to quit.

“It has nothing to do in terms of a need to drive attrition or layoffs,” said Khosrowshahi, adding that the changes had nothing to do with cost cutting. “None of that is planned. The business is operating really, really well. But listen, good isn’t good enough for us. We have to be great as a company.”

Uber will report its first quarter financial results Wednesday.

After the all-hands meeting, Uber Chief People Officer Nikki Krishnamurthy sent out a memo saying some employee comments on the meeting broadcast “crossed the line into unprofessional and disrespectful.” 

“That’s not O.K., and we will be speaking with the employees who made them,” Krishnamurthy wrote, according to the memo which CNBC viewed. “Through good times and bad, we are open with each other. Yet when we see behavior like this, it makes it harder to continue being open in the same way.”

Uber in 2022 established Tuesdays and Thursdays as “anchor days” where most employees must spend at least half of their work time in the company’s office and the rest of the week could be spent working remotely for “individual productivity,” according to a now-removed blog post. 

“Our business also exists in the real world, on the streets of thousands of cities, and it’s important we stay connected to the places we serve,” Krishnamurthy wrote at the time.

On the company forum, several employees questioned the change to three days in-office, citing insufficient meeting rooms and work space, according to comments viewed by CNBC.

“It’s a challenge every anchor day to even find a place to sit with your team,” one employee comment said. 

The goal of anchor days is “to get as many people in the office as possible,” Khosrowshahi said, adding that Uber will be keeping track of employee attendance.

Krishnamurthy addressed the concerns about office space at the company meeting, announcing that Uber is adding 700,000 square feet of office space between its San Francisco Mission Bay and Seattle offices. The additional space will go toward more meeting rooms and cafeterias, said Krishnamurthy, adding the retrofitting will be in construction through 2026.

WATCH: Uber raises in-office requirement to 3 days, claws back remote workers

SpaceX has been granted permission by the Federal Aviation Administration to launch and land its massive Starship rockets and Super Heavy boosters up to 25 times per year from the company’s Starbase spaceport in Texas.

The aerospace and defense contractor run by Elon Musk was previously restricted to five Starship launches per year from the site. While SpaceX submitted the proposal to increase its launch cadence on the Texas Gulf Coast during the Biden administration, a final environmental assessment was just announced on Tuesday, more than three months into President Donald Trump’s term.

Musk has been a central figure in President Trump’s second administration, leading an effort to shrink the federal government and regulatory agencies, including those that oversee his companies.

The decision that the FAA announced on Tuesday is one piece of the agency’s license review process for launches.

“There are other licensing requirements still to be completed,” the FAA said in an emailed statement, with ongoing reviews that pertain to “policy, payload, safety, financial responsibility and environmental impacts.”

“Once the evaluation process is complete, the FAA will make a determination to approve or deny the license application,” the agency said.

In its final environmental assessment, the FAA decided that SpaceX’s proposal for more launches from Boca Chica, Texas, would have “no significant impact” to the environment in the vicinity. The determination follows a string of SpaceX Starship test flights and explosions, and legal clashes between the company, environmental groups and the FAA.

SpaceX originally designed its Starship rockets with the goal of launching cargo, and as many as 100 people at a time, to space. Musk has long promised SpaceX would conduct manned missions to Mars in the near future with Starship, though a realistic timeline for his goal remains elusive.

SpaceX’s first integrated Starship vehicle launched from the Boca Chica facility in April 2023, and exploded mid-flight. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service soon disclosed details about the aftermath of that explosion, including that a “3.5-acre fire started south of the pad site on Boca Chica State Park land,” following the test flight. Fire and debris destroyed nests, eggs and fragile habitat of endangered species in the area, the New York Times reported.

The next month, the Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental advocates, sued the FAA over purportedly inadequate environmental reviews before granting SpaceX permission to conduct those launches.

By August 2024, Texas state and federal environmental regulators had fined SpaceX after determining the company had violated the Clean Water Act at Starbase, repeatedly polluting waters in the area. Musk then threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach” when the agency said it would levy fines against SpaceX after alleged licensing and safety-related violations during two other launches in 2023.

Musk didn’t sue, however. Instead, he spent almost $300 million to propel Trump back to the White House.

A senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, Jared Margolis, said in an email to CNBC on Tuesday, that his group was “incredibly disappointed, though not surprised, that the FAA has allowed SpaceX to drastically increase the number of launches and the associated harm to an ecologically critical area without taking the time to fully analyze and mitigate the impacts to the community and wildlife.”

A SpaceX spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The decision by the FAA comes days after SpaceX won an election over the weekend to incorporate Starbase as its own city. The mayor and two city commissioners both come from SpaceX’s employee ranks.

WATCH: SpaceX scrubs launch of mission to replace stranded astronauts