China Achieves Mass Production Breakthrough with 360TB Glass Hard Drives
Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) have achieved small-scale mass production of glass-based hard drives, a breakthrough that could transform enterprise cold data storage. Each glass disc can store a staggering 360 terabytes of data across 400 stacked layers, using laser "carving" technology that writes data into the internal structure of the glass medium.
IMO it isnt even the funding, its the manufacturing infrastructure that makes any of it possible at any real scale.
yes that’s an important part, once the research is complete you need to be able to scale up production which is also something only China can do, even more so than the research.