Magnetic Storage Bubble: The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) format was designed back in the 90s as an open-standard alternative to proprietary tape formats. Now, the magnetic storage technology is growing in both relevance and shipment volumes because AI companies can't seem to stop gobbling up digital data for LLM training and inference workloads.
The now-defunct DOGE initiative tried to get rid of magnetic tapes for alleged efficiency reasons, but the "legacy" storage format is now more popular than ever. According to the LTO Consortium, the combined shipped capacity of LTO-compatible media experienced substantial growth during the first quarter of the year. And things could have been even better if geopolitical uncertainties hadn't affected the market and companies' business goals.
Consisting of HPE, IBM, and Quantum Corporation, the LTO Consortium works to promote and license LTO Ultrium technology to interested manufacturers. The organization recently said that LTO capacity shipments in Q1 2026 grew by 57% compared to the same period in 2025, demonstrating that magnetic tape remains a resilient business and demand for tape-based solutions keeps rising.
Quantum CEO Hugues Meyrath highlighted how organizations are dealing with unprecedented growth in digital data and related workloads. Combined with rising hardware and power costs and increasing pressure to build more resilient cyber operations, data growth is forcing enterprises to adopt long-term storage solutions such as LTO Ultrium.
Magnetic tape is once again becoming a strategic element of modern data infrastructures, Meyrath said, and market results are proof of the change. In 2024, LTO media set a massive all-time record of 176.5 exabytes in shipped capacity. The market went through a "modest" 9% decline in 2025, with 160.3 exabytes shipped, but the LTO Consortium is now forecasting renewed growth by the end of 2026.
Q1 2026 growth was driven by the increasing prevalence of LTO-9 tapes, which have a "native" capacity of 18TB and can store up to 45TB of compressed data. Newer LTO-10 tapes, released earlier this year, can store 40TB/100TB of uncompressed/compressed data and are likely to entice even more customers over the next few months.
Storage analyst Tom Coughlin said that both AI workloads and traditional archival workloads can drive growth in the LTO Ultrium market. Many organizations are considering tape-based solutions for both their primary and secondary storage platforms, with tape media acting as a stable anchor in a mix of different storage solutions.
Magnetic tape has always been a popular medium for "cold" storage applications because it can quickly provide terabytes of additional capacity at a low cost per TB. The LTO Consortium is also hoping that customers will upgrade their existing solutions to newer LTO generations, which should further boost shipment figures.