Fujifilm to quintuple magnetic tape output as AI data centers drive storage demand

Fujifilm will raise its magnetic tape production capacity fivefold by fiscal 2028, its biggest tape investment in about two decades, Nikkei reports. The company plans to spend about 10 billion yen at its Odawara plant in Kanagawa, focusing on high-capacity cartridges that hold up to 100TB compressed (40TB native). AI data centers are driving the demand as they look for cheap, low-power ways to archive training data offline; tape costs roughly a quarter as much as hard drives for cold storage, and rising SSD and HDD prices have widened that gap. Offline tape also guards archives against ransomware.