AI's Hidden Cost Is So Massive Even 1950s Tech Is Making a Comeback
Generative intelligence demands so much digital space that the tech world is reviving a medium invented in the mid-twentieth century.
Generative intelligence demands so much digital space that the tech world is reviving a medium invented in the mid-twentieth century. Fujifilm plans to invest roughly 63 million dollars to increase its production capacity fivefold for magnetic tape, pointing to exponential data growth fueled by artificial intelligence. The project will run through fiscal year 2028 at the company manufacturing site in Kanagawa, marking its largest investment yet in dedicated linear tape-open facilities.
Most of the new personnel and funding will go toward producing the latest-generation Ultrium10 format. Our read is that while hyperscalers chase lightning-fast solid-state drives for active training, the sheer volume of raw data generated along the way creates a massive cold storage hangover. Hard drives consume too much continuous power for petabytes of dormant logs, making inert magnetic strips the only economically viable graveyard for the modern machine age.
Watch whether other legacy media manufacturers follow suit as enterprise storage budgets buckle under the weight of generative models.
The story so far
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Original publication: 30 October 2026 23:08