Fujifilm Plans to Quintuple Tape Capacity. Seagate Says Most Nearline Supply Is Allocated Through 2028

What did Fujifilm announce?

On October 29, Fujifilm said it will invest about ¥10 billion ($64 million), mainly for LTO Ultrium10, its newest data tape. LTO is an open tape format developed by HPE, IBM and Quantum, the LTO Program’s technology providers. Licensed manufacturers, including Fujifilm, build the cartridges.

The fivefold figure is capacity, not output or sales, measured against fiscal 2025.

How much of tape’s recent growth is AI?

The sources do not say. Attributed to AI: Fujifilm and the LTO Program name AI training data. The program’s backers, HPE, IBM and Quantum, promote LTO products, and Coughlin is quoted in its release. Other causes: Fujifilm cites cloud services and ransomware, Coughlin cites traditional archives, and the program credits LTO-9 and the new 40 TB cartridge for Q1.

Not measured: AI’s share, cartridge counts or Q1 volume. Sales recovered in late 2025, so the Q1 2025 base may be soft. That is our inference.

How big is tape next to hard drives?

Much smaller, but the figures below differ in year, period, manufacturers and compression.

Seagate’s one quarter is about three times our estimated LTO native total for a full year. Annual disk volume would be larger still. This shows order of magnitude, not market share.

Why could tight disk supply help tape?

Evidence. Seagate says the vast majority of its nearline supply is allocated through 2028. Data center customers took 90% of its total 220 EB shipped, not only nearline. Coughlin reports media companies moving data off disks onto LTO amid shortages, an anecdote, not market data.

Ludicarc’s hypothesis. Buyers outside the largest cloud contracts may wait or pay more for disk. Rarely read data can sit on tape, which has separate manufacturers. Fujifilm’s release does not cite disk shortages, and Seagate calls AI an accelerator of growth that video and analytics already drive.

How could this affect ordinary people?

Directly, no effect is established. Consumers do not buy LTO tape, and Fujifilm’s investment does not set consumer prices or services. Any effect would run through a chain: data center operators choose where to keep data, that shapes their storage costs and capacity, and those costs may or may not reach what they charge.

Cloud storage and AI services (indirect, uncertain). Providers rarely say which media hold files. Seagate says it raised prices to customers recently, reflecting its value-based pricing framework and higher component costs, as nearline contracts renew. That describes Seagate’s contracts, not every drive price, and is not evidence that cloud storage or AI subscriptions will cost more: providers may absorb it, and we found no evidence that consumer prices have changed. Seagate’s CEO calls storage a small cost next to computing, a vendor claim.

Offline backups (possible benefit). Fujifilm says tape can be physically isolated from networks, and the LTO Program touts its cyber-resilience. A disconnected copy is less directly exposed to ransomware while offline, but that guarantees neither protection nor recovery: the copy must be current, complete and restorable, and no independent test is cited. For institutions, it is one possible layer.

Long term (speculative). More tape capacity could give providers another option for rarely used data, but the sources show no consumer-visible change.

The counterpoint

Tape trades speed for cost. Restores are slow, so it suits archives, not constant reads. Supply is concentrated: just two companies, Fujifilm and Sony, make LTO cartridges, and shortages have happened before. Timing is uncertain: the release gives no date for the fivefold level or baseline, while The Register describes a two-year plan.

These limits make the 5x a plan, not relief, but do not erase the growth.

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