Fujifilm will spend 10 billion yen ($63 million) to increase magnetic tape production fivefold. This expansion targets five times the fiscal year 2025 production levels. The project at the Kanagawa Factory Odawara site runs from fiscal years 2026 through 2028 to fund manufacturing expansion and additional personnel, primarily to produce the latest-generation "FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10" tape. This project makes the Odawara site the largest investment Fujifilm has made in dedicated LTO tape facilities. I view the scale of this investment as a necessary reaction to the "exponential growth" in data needs worldwide caused by generative AI.
The "FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10" uses "fine hybrid magnetic particles" by combining barium ferrite with strontium ferrite tech. This storage solution debuted in 2025. Fujifilm’s work with magnetic tape as a data storage medium dates back to the 1950s and the company released its first LTO Ultrium storage tape in 2000. The company first commercially produced tape with barium ferrite magnetic particles in 2011. Each generation of tape, including the current Gen 10, sees meaningful increases in both compressed and uncompressed storage limits. Major cloud service and data center operators expand their use of magnetic tape because it stores large data volumes at relatively low cost.
Air-gapped protection
Tape offers a physical defense against digital threats. Because cyberattacks grow more sophisticated, major cloud service and data center operators use magnetic tape to air-gap data cartridges in vaults or separate facilities to protect against threats such as ransomware or other data-related risks. This ability to air-gap tape cartridges provides a last defense for user data. While mainstream consumers abandoned tape decades ago, the enterprise world never did. Enterprise users favor tape because they can disconnect and store cartridges in a drawer, a vault, or a separate facility. Fujifilm attributes the surge in archiving demand to the spread of generative AI, which produces "exponential growth" in data needs worldwide. Cloud giants rely on tape to back up vast troves of data.
