Fujifilm to Expand Magnetic Tape Output Fivefold as AI Drives Archiving Demand

Fujifilm plans to spend about 10 billion yen (roughly $63 million) to quintuple its magnetic tape production capacity, the company announced Thursday, pointing to generative AI as the force behind an "exponential growth" in worldwide data needs.

The fivefold increase will be measured against fiscal year 2025 production levels, with the money going to the company's Kanagawa Factory, Odawara site. Fujifilm called it the largest investment it has made to date in facilities dedicated to LTO tape.

Work runs from fiscal years 2026 through 2028, covering manufacturing expansion and additional staff, mainly to produce the latest-generation FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10 tape.

Tape fell out of favor with consumers long ago, but enterprises never let it go. Cloud providers still lean on it to back up enormous data stores. Fujifilm has worked with magnetic tape as a storage medium since the 1950s, released its first LTO Ultrium tape in 2000, and was first to commercially produce tape using barium ferrite magnetic particles in 2011. In 2025 it introduced LTO Ultrium10, the first in the medium to use what the company calls "fine hybrid magnetic particles," blending barium ferrite with strontium ferrite technology.

According to Fujifilm, major cloud service and data center operators are expanding their use of tape because it stores large volumes at relatively low cost. Cartridges can be disconnected and kept in a drawer, a vault, or another facility. Fujifilm points to that air-gap capability as a last line of defense for user data: "Given the sophistication of cyberattacks, magnetic tape is attracting increasing attention as a means of protecting data from threats such as ransomware."

Source: Ars Technica