The cost of tape is a big deal for for some bigger science experiments.

They often cost billions to build and they take loads of data, but most of it ends up heavily distilled by the time it goes to the final analysis pipeline, so keeping the raw data on tape is pretty common.

There was a time when tape was more specialized and we were worried about loosing our limited suppliers. The explosion in the ML that powers search and more recently the AI boom makes the technology look a lot more stable these days, which is a relief for us.