AI Weekly Malaysia

Tape storage vendors shipped 160 exabytes of capacity in 2025, with Q1 2026 capacity shipments rising 57% year-over-year, driven by AI data growth, LTO-9 momentum, and early LTO-10 adoption. The article body is mostly site navigation and membership boilerplate, so technical detail beyond the headline figures is unavailable.

Why: If you are building AI pipelines or data lakes and haven't priced cold-storage tiers, the 57% YoY tape shipment surge signals that hyperscalers and enterprises are scaling archival storage aggressively for AI training data retention. Consider whether your storage architecture separates hot GPU-adjacent storage from cold tape-backed tiers, especially as LTO-10 brings higher per-cartridge capacity.

LTO tape shipments fell 16 exabytes (9%) in 2025 to 160.3 EB, down from 2024's record 176.5 EB, with analyst Tom Coughlin blaming trade uncertainty for cautious purchasing. Q1 2026 shipments rebounded 57% YoY, driven partly by a new 40TB cartridge compatible with existing 30TB-capable drives.

Why: Unless you operate cold-storage or archival infrastructure, this has no direct impact on what you ship. The one angle worth noting: tape's low power consumption is being pitched as a datacenter advantage as power constraints bite, which could matter for teams evaluating long-term storage costs for large AI training datasets or compliance archives.