Fuji Film bets $67M on tape: AI cold-data archiving sparks a storage renaissance
APPSO · wechat · 2026-11-07
Fujifilm will invest ¥10B to quintuple tape output at its Kanagawa plant by FY2028, driven by generative AI's cold-data archiving needs. Tape offers 86% lower 10-year TCO and 95% lower carbon vs HDD arrays for 100PB archives.
Latest LTO-10 cartridges hold 40TB raw (100TB compressed), a 400x jump from 2000's 100GB. Global LTO shipments hit a record 176.5EB in 2024 and grew 57% YoY in Q1 2026. CERN stores 1EB of collider data on 60,000 tapes; HDD makers Seagate and WD are similarly sold out through 2028-2030. Microsoft's Project Silica glass storage looms as a future rival.
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