Ewigbyte, new project to preserve data over long term on glass

Ewigbyte joined The IT Press Tour this week in Athens, Greece. The company introduces its vision for a new paradigm in cold data storage-one that is secure, sovereign, and environmentally sustainable. The company argues that the digital age, driven by explosive data growth, artificial intelligence, and rising energy constraints, has reached a breaking point where traditional storage technologies can no longer scale economically or sustainably. Cold data—information that must be retained for long periods but is rarely accessed - has become the critical bottleneck in global data infrastructure.

ewigbyte frames the challenge through powerful macro trends. Data volumes are growing faster than enterprise storage production capacity, creating a projected supply gap of roughly 15 zettabytes by 2030, or around 50% shortfall. At the same time, storage costs are rising sharply, with hard drives and SSDs experiencing double-digit annual price increases. The industry’s dependence on HDDs, SSDs, and magnetic tape - technologies that are decades old and prone to failure, degradation, and environmental risk - makes the current trajectory unsustainable in terms of energy use, electronic waste, water consumption, and CO₂ emissions.

The company’s core proposition is to rethink cold storage from first principles. Instead of optimizing for density and write speed, ewigbyte prioritizes durability, security, and minimal climate impact. Its solution is based on writing data directly onto glass using photonic technology. Data blocks are "burned" into ultra-thin glass media with ultra-short pulse UV lasers and structured light modulators, without toxic coatings. The result is a write-once, immutable storage medium designed to last more than 10,000 years, resistant to heat, humidity, electromagnetic pulses, radiation, and cyber threats such as ransomware. Because the stored data requires no power to maintain, its operational climate impact is effectively zero.

ewigbyte emphasizes that glass ablation is not experimental science but a proven industrial process already used in other manufacturing contexts. The company’s innovation lies in its modified optical system and its ability to integrate laser writing, robotics, and physical data warehousing into a scalable storage service. Rather than conventional data centers, ewigbyte envisions physical data warehouses where glass-based storage cubes are catalogued, stored securely, and retrieved when needed.

From a market perspective, ewigbyte positions itself as a long-term successor to tape and HDD-based archives. As SSDs dominate hot and warm data tiers, cold data will increasingly migrate to optical and photonic media. The company outlines a staged go-to-market approach, beginning with paid pilot projects focused on WORN (write once, read never) use cases, followed by WORM archival data centers, and eventually scaling toward broader cold and warm data services as economies of scale are achieved. Key applications include compliance archives, backups, hyperscaler archives, and data sets with low read frequency but strict durability and sovereignty requirements.

The roadmap projects an MVP in 2026, the demonstration of the first dedicated archival data center by 2028, and large-scale operational facilities by 2029. Supported by an experienced founding team with legal, technical, and industry expertise, ewigbyte presents itself as a foundational technology company aiming to redefine how humanity preserves data for centuries - shifting cold storage from an energy-hungry liability into a permanent, sustainable asset.

We'll monitor carefully the progress made by the team as it is a key European initiative.