LTO Tape: Why Fujifilm Wants 5x More Capacity for AI Archives

LTO tape, the cartridge format that big data centres use for long-term archives, is getting its biggest factory bet yet. On October 29, Fujifilm announced it will spend about 10 billion yen to raise its tape data storage production capacity roughly five times by fiscal 2028, and it named generative AI and cloud services as the reason.

That sounds odd if you think of magnetic tape storage as something from an old office basement. For the companies building AI, though, tape storage solutions offer cheap long-term space and a copy that sits physically off the network, where ransomware cannot reach it.

Below: what this tape actually is, what the newest drive can and cannot do, how long the format stays readable, and where tape fits next to hard drives and SSDs.

What is LTO tape?

It is a standard cartridge of magnetic tape, plus the drive that writes and reads it, built for storing large amounts of data that nobody needs to open every day. According to The Register, the format is led by HPE, IBM and Quantum, and it is the only non-proprietary tape format still standing.

The format has a long history. Fujifilm says it launched its first LTO Ultrium1 cartridge in 2000. In 2011 it became the first company to sell tape coated with barium ferrite (BaFe, a type of magnetic particle that holds the recorded data). Fujifilm also says it holds the top global share of the magnetic tape market, though that is the company's own claim.

Cartridges come in numbered generations. Each new generation holds more data per cartridge, and the current one is LTO-10. Fujifilm's version, LTO Ultrium10, launched in 2025 and is the main product this expansion is for.

Why is Fujifilm making five times more tape now?

Fujifilm is expanding because demand for data archiving from generative AI and cloud services is growing, according to its press release. Fujifilm's pitch is that tape offers low-cost long-term storage for that growing archive.

The details of the plan, from Fujifilm:

• Money: about 10 billion yen, which The Register converts to roughly $64 million and The Next Web to about EUR 56 million.
• Place: its Kanagawa Factory, Odawara Site, in Japan.
• Timing: fiscal 2026 to fiscal 2028.
• Size: about five times more production capacity, measured as shipment capacity against fiscal 2025.
• Scale: Fujifilm calls it its largest investment to date in dedicated facilities for LTO.

One precise point: the "5x" is a capacity target, describing how much tape Fujifilm will be able to ship compared with fiscal 2025. Actual sales will depend on demand.

Fujifilm gives a second reason too. It says tape's physical isolation from networks is drawing attention as protection against ransomware (malicious software that encrypts a company's files and demands payment). A cartridge sitting on a shelf has no network connection, so an attacker inside the network cannot encrypt it, which is what makes an offline tape backup attractive.

What can an LTO 10 tape drive do?

It writes 30TB or 40TB of native data to a single cartridge, depending on the variant, and moves data at 400 MB/s, according to The Register. "Native" means the raw capacity before any compression is applied, which is the fairest number for comparing cartridges.

There is a catch for anyone with an existing archive, because older cartridges are no longer backwards compatible with the newest drive: LTO-10 drives can only read LTO-10 tapes. Earlier LTO tape drives could read cartridges from past generations, and The Register reports that this backward reading ended with LTO-10. In practice, an LTO 9 tape will not play in a new LTO-10 drive, so a company upgrading has to keep an older LTO tape drive around or copy its archive onto new cartridges.

Capacity is set to keep growing. The Register lists the published LTO roadmap like this:

That last figure is a little over nine times the largest LTO-10 cartridge (our arithmetic: 365 divided by 40). The Register says four more generations are defined and that the format updates roughly every four years.

How long does LTO tape last?

The sources behind this story give no shelf-life figure for LTO-10 cartridges, so there is no sourced number to quote. Fujifilm describes tape only as low-cost, long-term storage.

The news does clarify one part of LTO tape lifespan: the drives. New generations arrive about every four years. Older drives used to read past-generation cartridges, which gave archives some breathing room during upgrades. Now that LTO-10 drives read only LTO-10 tapes, the useful life of a cartridge is tied more tightly to the life of the drives that match it.

For anyone planning an archive, that turns into a simple rule. Treat tape as something you migrate on a regular cycle. Keep at least one working drive for each generation you still hold, and budget for copying older cartridges forward when you retire those drives.

Is tape storage still used?

Yes, and by large operators. Fujifilm says cloud providers and data centre operators increasingly use tape for long-term storage, as The Next Web reports. Fujifilm's own spending plan is the clearest signal it expects that use to grow.

The shipment numbers are bumpier than the headlines suggest. LTO shipments fell 9% in 2025, to 160.3 exabytes, from a record 176.5 exabytes in 2024, according to The Next Web. (An exabyte is a million terabytes.) The LTO Program told The Register that sales picked up strongly in the second half of 2025 and predicts record sales in 2026.

The Next Web also reports, citing The Register, that shipments rose 57% in the first quarter of 2026. We could not find that figure in the Register article we read, so treat it as The Next Web's number until the LTO Program publishes its full-year report.

So the picture is a dip in 2025, a recovery that started late that year, and a manufacturer betting heavily that the recovery holds.

Tape vs HDD vs SSD: where does each one fit?

Tape's niche is low-cost, long-term, offline storage. Per Fujifilm and The Next Web, that is where LTO tapes are strongest: a cartridge on a shelf is cheap to keep and sits offline, out of a ransomware attacker's reach. Neither source gives price or speed figures against hard drives or SSDs, and the one speed number we have is LTO-10's 400 MB/s transfer rate. Fujifilm points to archive demand as the reason for its expansion, which makes tape drive storage an archive tier in its pitch rather than a place for data in daily use.

Pressure on other storage is part of the context. Flash has become more expensive as AI datacenters buy it up, which we covered in why SSD prices are rising, and memory is under similar pressure, as explained in why RAM prices are going up. Fujifilm itself does not cite flash or memory prices as a reason for its expansion. It points to archive demand and ransomware protection, so any link between those price rises and tape demand is our reading, not the company's.

What to watch next

Four things will show whether the LTO tape revival is real or just a good press cycle:

• The LTO Program's 2026 shipment report. It will confirm or deny the predicted record year and the 57% first-quarter figure The Next Web reported.
• Fujifilm's Odawara build-out. The expansion runs through fiscal 2028, so watch for updates on whether the added capacity comes online on time.
• The LTO-10 compatibility break. Since new drives no longer read older cartridges, see how archive owners handle migration from LTO 9 tape and earlier.
• LTO-11 around 2029. The Register lists it at 70TB native. Its timing will show whether the roughly four-year cadence holds.