As generative AI drives demand for more data storage, Fujifilm is preparing a major expansion of its magnetic tape manufacturing. The company says it will invest roughly 10 billion yen (about $63 million) to increase production capacity fivefold, measured against fiscal year 2025 levels.
More capacity for a growing archive
The project is planned for fiscal years 2026 through 2028 at Fujifilm’s Kanagawa Factory, Odawara site. It will support manufacturing expansion and additional personnel, with production focused primarily on the latest-generation “FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10” tape.
Fujifilm describes the investment as its largest to date in dedicated LTO tape facilities. The scale of the planned increase reflects a storage challenge that accompanies the growth of generative AI: archiving rising volumes of data.
The company links the increase in archiving demand to generative AI, which it says is producing “exponential growth” in data needs worldwide. The planned fivefold capacity increase is a response to that demand, rather than a return to tape as a mainstream consumer product.
Why tape remains useful to data centers
Although everyday consumers moved away from tape decades ago, it continues to have a role in enterprise storage. Fujifilm says major cloud service and data center operators have been expanding their use of magnetic tape because it can hold large volumes of data at relatively low cost.
Tape also offers a way to keep backup copies offline. Cartridges can be disconnected and stored in a drawer, vault, or separate facility. That physical separation, often called an air gap, can help protect backup data from network-based threats such as ransomware.
Fujifilm presents this offline capability as a last line of defense for user data, citing the sophistication of cyberattacks. Tape’s appeal therefore comes from a combination of storage economics and the option to remove backups from connected systems.
A long-running storage technology
Fujifilm’s work with magnetic tape for data storage dates to the 1950s. The company released its first LTO Ultrium storage tape in 2000, and it was the first to commercially produce tape with barium ferrite magnetic particles in 2011.
In 2025, Fujifilm debuted LTO Ultrium10, which it describes as the first storage solution in the medium to use “fine hybrid magnetic particles.” The technology combines barium ferrite with strontium ferrite. Across successive generations, tape has gained higher compressed and uncompressed storage limits.
That development history helps explain why a mature format can still attract investment. Tape continues to evolve, and operators that need to retain large data collections can weigh its capacity and cost against the benefit of keeping backup copies disconnected.
What the expansion signals
Fujifilm’s plan points to a continuing need for archival storage alongside the growth of AI and cloud infrastructure. More data does not only need to be created and accessed; some of it also needs to be retained, backed up, and protected over time.
The planned investment will add manufacturing capacity for a format that supports those archival tasks. Its importance lies in the practical role tape still plays: storing substantial volumes at relatively low cost and allowing copies to be kept offline.