Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand

In an announcement released Thursday, Fujifilm said it will invest roughly 10 billion yen (about $63 million) to increase its production capacity fivefold for an unlikely beneficiary of the AI era: magnetic tape.

富士胶片在周四发布的一份公告中表示，将投资约100亿日元（约合6300万美元），将其磁带的产能提高五倍，而磁带正是人工智能时代一个意想不到的受益者。

Fujifilm attributes the surge in archiving demand to the spread of generative AI, which the company remarked is producing “exponential growth” in data needs worldwide. The 5x increase in production capacity will be measured against fiscal year 2025 production levels.

富士胶片将归档需求的激增归因于生成式人工智能的普及，该公司指出，这正在导致全球数据需求出现“指数级增长”。此次五倍的产能提升将以2025财年的生产水平为基准。

The investment in Fujifilm’s Kanagawa Factory, Odawara site will make it “the largest investment Fujifilm has made to date in dedicated LTO tape facilities.” The project will run from fiscal years 2026 through 2028 to fund manufacturing expansion and additional personnel, primarily to produce the latest-generation “FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10” tape.

对富士胶片神奈川工厂小田原基地的投资，将使其成为“富士胶片迄今为止在LTO磁带专用设施上进行的最大规模投资”。该项目将于2026财年至2028财年期间实施，用于资助制造规模的扩大和人员的增加，主要目标是生产最新一代的“FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10”磁带。

Mainstream consumers may have abandoned tape decades ago, but the enterprise world never did. Cloud giants rely on tape to back up vast troves of data.

主流消费者可能早在几十年前就放弃了磁带，但企业界从未如此。云巨头们依赖磁带备份海量数据。

Fujifilm’s work with magnetic tape as a data storage medium dates back to the 1950s, and in 2000, the company released its first LTO Ultrium storage tape. In 2011, the company was the first to commercially produce tape with barium ferrite magnetic particles, and in 2025 it debuted the LTO Ultrium10, the first storage solution in the medium to use what the company calls “fine hybrid magnetic particles” by combining barium ferrite with strontium ferrite tech.

富士胶片在磁带数据存储介质领域的工作可以追溯到20世纪50年代，并于2000年发布了其首款LTO Ultrium存储磁带。2011年，该公司率先商业化生产了采用钡铁氧体磁性颗粒的磁带；2025年，它推出了LTO Ultrium10，这是该介质中首个通过结合钡铁氧体和锶铁氧体技术，使用该公司所谓的“精细混合磁性颗粒”的存储解决方案。

Each generation of tape (currently Gen 10) has seen meaningful increases in both compressed and uncompressed storage limits. According to Fujifilm, “major cloud service and data center operators” have been expanding their use of magnetic tape because it can store large data volumes at relatively low cost.

每一代磁带（目前为第10代）在压缩和非压缩存储限制方面都有显著提升。据富士胶片称，“主要的云服务和数据中心运营商”一直在扩大磁带的使用，因为它可以以相对较低的成本存储大量数据。

Tape backups can be easily disconnected and stored in a drawer, a vault, or a separate facility. Fujifilm highlights the ability to air-gap tape cartridges as a last defense for user data: “Given the sophistication of cyberattacks, magnetic tape is attracting increasing attention as a means of protecting data from threats such as ransomware.”

磁带备份可以轻松断开连接，并存放在抽屉、保险库或独立的设施中。富士胶片强调，磁带盒能够实现物理隔离，作为用户数据的最后一道防线：“鉴于网络攻击的复杂性，磁带作为一种保护数据免受勒索软件等威胁的手段，正受到越来越多的关注。”