Fujifilm plans to increase magnetic tape production fivefold to meet growing demand from AI data centers. The Japanese company will invest 10 billion yen, or about $64 million, in its factory in Odawara, Kanagawa. It described the spending as its largest investment in magnetic tape technology in two decades.
The expansion is scheduled for fiscal years 2026 through 2028. The company’s plan comes as AI training and inference generate growing volumes of data, while shortages have pushed up prices for enterprise SSDs and hard drives. Magnetic tape is being considered for “cold data”: information that must be preserved securely over the long term but is rarely accessed immediately.
Tape can offer lower storage costs and energy use for large-scale infrastructure, according to the source report. The cost of retaining a terabyte on tape can be about a quarter of the cost on traditional hard drives, and tape consumes considerably less power when idle.
Fujifilm’s investment will support production of tape based on the LTO-10 standard. Those cartridges hold 40 TB natively, with capacity of up to 100 TB when data is compressed. The LTO roadmap includes LTO-11 in 2029, with 70 TB of native capacity, while later generations are projected to reach as much as 365 TB per tape.
Sources: Canaltech.