Fujifilm boosts tape production by 5x
Fujifilm is investing 10 billion Yen to quintuple magnetic tape production, targeting the massive data archiving needs of the AI era.
As the AI boom drives an insatiable demand for massive data storage, magnetic tape is making a significant comeback. Fujifilm has confirmed it will quintuple its magnetic tape production capacity compared to 2025 levels, backed by a 10 billion Japanese Yen (approximately £47 million) investment.
The surge in demand is primarily driven by generative AI. The enormous datasets required for both AI training and inference demand secure and efficient archiving solutions. According to Fujifilm, this investment aims to provide a stable supply for major cloud service providers and data center operators who are managing unprecedented volumes of information.
The production expansion specifically targets the LTO Ultrium10 medium, launched in 2025. This technology utilizes proprietary fine hybrid magnetic particles to achieve higher storage density. A single 30TB Ultrium10 cartridge can hold up to 75TB of compressed data. Beyond density, tape offers a critical security advantage: offline storage (air gapping), which protects archives from ransomware and cyberattacks since the media must be physically removed to be inaccessible.
While tape is not suitable for applications requiring immediate random access, its cost-efficiency per terabyte makes it a much more economical choice than hard drives for long-term, large-scale archiving in the modern digital landscape.
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