Fujifilm announced Thursday a roughly 10 billion yen ($63 million) investment to quintuple magnetic tape production capacity at its Kanagawa Factory through fiscal year 2028. The Japanese firm attributes the surge in demand to generative AI's "exponential growth" in global data needs. The project will primarily manufacture the latest-generation FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10 tape, the first storage solution using fine hybrid magnetic particles combining barium and strontium ferrite tech.
While mainstream consumers abandoned tape decades ago, enterprise and cloud giants continue relying on the medium for archiving. Fujifilm highlighted magnetic tape's ability to air-gap data as a critical defense against increasingly sophisticated ransomware threats. The investment marks the largest Fujifilm has made to date in dedicated LTO tape facilities, underscoring the unexpected revival of magnetic storage in the AI era.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing