AI is reviving magnetic tape: Fujifilm spends $63M to boost tape output 5x
demian_ai · x · 2026-11-04
AI is bringing magnetic tape back. Fujifilm is investing about $63M to produce 5x more data tape than in 2025 — its biggest-ever tape factory investment.
Tape cartridges sit on shelves drawing no power, are offline (so ransomware can't reach them), and are far cheaper than always-spinning hard drives. The catch is speed: finding data means winding through the ribbon, so tape only suits rarely-accessed data — exactly what AI generates en masse: training sets, checkpoints, and per-run logs.
An LTO-10 cartridge holds 30-40 TB today, with a roadmap to 365 TB. Behind every new GPU cluster, expect a very unglamorous shelf of tape.
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