In an announcement released Thursday, Fujifilm said it will invest approximately 10 billion yen (about $63 million) to quintuple its production capacity for an unlikely beneficiary of the AI era: magnetic tape.
Fujifilm attributes the increase in demand for files to the spread of generative AI, which the company says is producing “exponential growth” in data needs around the world. The 5x increase in production capacity will be measured against fiscal year 2025 production levels.
The investment in Fujifilm’s Kanagawa factory in Odawara will make it “the largest investment Fujifilm has made to date in facilities dedicated to LTO tapes.” The project will run from fiscal years 2026 to 2028 to fund manufacturing expansion and additional personnel, primarily to produce the next-generation “FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10” tape.
Traditional consumers may have abandoned tape decades ago, but the business world never did. Cloud giants rely on tape to back up large amounts of data. Fujifilm’s work with magnetic tape as a data storage medium dates back to the 1950s, and in 2000 the company released its first LTO Ultrium storage tape. In 2011, the company was the first to commercially produce tape with barium ferrite magnetic particles, and in 2025 it introduced LTO Ultrium10, the first medium storage solution that uses what the company calls “fine hybrid magnetic particles” combining barium ferrite with strontium ferrite technology. Each generation of tape (currently Gen 10) has seen significant increases in both compressed and uncompressed storage limits.
LTO capacity per generation. Gen 10 is the current technology; The Gen 11-14 figures are the consortium’s projections for the future.
LTO capacity per generation. Gen 10 is the current technology; The Gen 11-14 figures are the consortium’s projections for the future.
Credit: LTO.org
According to Fujifilm, “major data center and cloud service operators” have been expanding the use of magnetic tape because it can store large volumes of data at a relatively low cost. Tape backups can be easily disconnected and stored in a drawer, vault, or separate facility. Fujifilm highlights the ability to separate tape cartridges as a last defense for users’ data: “Given the sophistication of cyber attacks, magnetic tape is attracting increasing attention as a means of protecting data from threats such as ransomware.”
