Tape companies ship 160 exabytes of storage in 2025, AI data demands drive 'unprecedented data growth' — capacity shipped in Q1 2026 rose 57% YOY driven by AI, LTO‑9 momentum, and early LTO‑10 uptake
Tape storage companies celebrate capacity shipment growth of 57% YOY for Q1 2026.
In Q1 2026, tape storage companies, including HPE, IBM, and Quantum Corp., announced a 57% year-over-year increase in shipped capacity. This surge in demand can be attributed to the growing need for AI data centers, traditional archive workloads, and cyber-resilient backups. While 2025 saw a minor dip in LTO capacity shipped due to bad weather, the total 160.3 exabytes shipped in 2025 remained the highest on record, surpassing the previous year's 176.5 exabytes.
Hugues Meyrath, CEO of Quantum, stated that tape is increasingly seen as a strategic component of modern data infrastructure due to its predictable economics and resilient long-term data retention. The growth in LTO demand is further fueled by the early adoption of LTO-9 and LTO-10 technologies, with the latter offering up to 40TB of native storage or 100TB compressed per cartridge.
The TPCs anticipate tape's continued relevance with roadmap extensions to LTO-14, which promises a massive 576TB native capacity or 1,440TB compressed per cartridge.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
