Archiving and data storage in general has, over the past decades, been overwhelmingly shifting towards digital. Now for the first time in years, LTO tapes are making a comeback fueled almost entirely by the new AI boom.
The numbers
The LTO consortium, composed of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, and Quantum Corporation, has published their annual report. In the first quarter of 2026, shipped capacities increased by 57 percent compared to the same period last year. The year 2024 had already set an absolute record with 176.5 exabytes – an increase of 15.4 percent compared to 2023. In 2025, delivery volumes slightly decreased by nine percent to 160.3 exabytes, but were still higher than in any other year before 2024.
Why tape?
Tape seems like an out of date low-tech solution in this day and age of Cloud computing and AI applications, but there’s a logic to the reversal. As usual, it comes down to costs and edge benefits.
Cost
While Project Silica, Cerabyte and others are pushing novel low-cost storage options, tape currently remains one of the cheapest options for data storage. This is especially crucial for AI-related companies, which require truly massive data stores of learning material to train their models on. Cheaper storage is cheaper storage, despite the lower accessibility and other downsides that initially drove adoption away from the technology.
Power
The energy efficiency of tapes is particularly relevant: In a time when the power supply for data centers is increasingly becoming a bottleneck, tape drives consume practically no power when idle. This sets them in stark contrast to more modern formats, especially Cloud data centers, which are notoriously power hungry.
Your Data in Your hands – With TECH-ARROW
by Matúš Koronthály
Image generated by Canva
