AI data platform company VAST Data recently announced that it had secured $118 million in Series E funding, led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and accompanied by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), BOND Capital, and Drive Capital.
This funding round will advance VAST Data’s mission to deliver a new category of infrastructure that puts data at the center of how systems think, react, and discover. And this breakthrough will enable organizations to effectively address their most pressing data challenges, enabling unprecedented advancements in technology, economics, social dynamics, and scientific research.
VAST’s Data Platform unifies storage, database, and containerized compute engine services into a single, scalable software platform architected from the ground up to power AI and GPU-accelerated tools in modern data centers and clouds. And the platform uniquely enables organizations to understand all data, both structured and unstructured as it exists in the natural world, to generate superior insights and unlock new value.
This funding round follows a pivotal 2023 calendar year marked by:
1.) Impressive Business Momentum – At the end of FY Q3, VAST Data surpassed $1 billion in cumulative software bookings. The company achieved 3.3x year-over-year (YoY) growth and maintained positive cash flow for the last 12 quarters with a gross margin of nearly 90%.
2.) Organizations Across All Industries Trust VAST Data – VAST Data has amassed a growing customer roster of global enterprises including Booking Holdings, Inc., U.S. Air Force, U.S. Department of Energy, Verizon, Boston Children’s Hospital, Pixar, and Zoom, among others, signaling strong market validation.
3.) Reimagining AI Cloud Infrastructure – Through innovative customer partnerships with companies like CoreWeave, Lambda and Core42 (formerly G42 Cloud), VAST Data delivers the infrastructure that is purpose-built for next-generation AI clouds.
4.)Deepened Commitment to Partners – VAST Data has worked closely with partners to break down technology tradeoffs and barriers while improving the overall customer experience since its founding. In May 2023, VAST Data furthered this mission with the VAST Data Platform achieving NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD certification, making large-scale AI deployments simpler, faster, more reliable, and easier to manage. In April 2023, VAST Data entered into a strategic partnership with HPE, helping enterprise customers manage unstructured data with high performance at scale to deliver superior time-to-data insight.
5.) Global Expansion – Now, with more than 700 employees worldwide, VAST Data is actively broadening its business footprint, penetrating new regions in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe.
KEY QUOTES:
“A new AI data stack is required. To be truly impactful in this era of AI and deep learning, you not only want to have a lot of data, but also high quality data that is correctly organized and available at the right place, at the right time. The VAST Data Platform delivers AI infrastructure that opens the door to automated discovery that can solve some of humanity’s most complex challenges.”
— Renen Hallak, CEO and Co-Founder of VAST Data
“We believe that VAST Data is a pioneer in the AI GPU space. With deep learning at the center of the massive AI movement we are experiencing, interest and investment in VAST Data has escalated, and we are thrilled to partner with the VAST Data team as they drive influence and innovation in the global AI technology sector.”
— Scott Sandell, Chairman, CEO and CIO at NEA
“Data is every company’s most valuable asset. NVIDIA and Vast Data are collaborating to enable enterprises to harness their data using accelerated computing and cloud-based AI solutions to tackle their biggest challenges.”
— Manuvir Das, vice president of Enterprise Computing at NVIDIA
“Some of the most data-intensive and computationally advanced customers on the planet trust CoreWeave, NVIDIA and VAST to deliver the most secure and scalable solutions on top of the industry’s fastest and most flexible AI infrastructure. We’re honored to partner with VAST to provide purpose-built accelerated computing solutions that solve the complex AI and data challenges that enterprises face now and into the future.”
— Michael Intrator, CEO and co-founder of CoreWeave
“As one of the top-ranked children’s hospitals in the country for over a decade, Boston Children’s Hospital prides itself as a leader in pediatric medical research, and our work with VAST Data helps us ensure that we’re delivering on that promise. This latest funding round for VAST Data further validates our strategic choice in infrastructure, as the VAST Data Platform empowers us to scale effortlessly with our expanding datasets, enabling us to train models that are pivotal for our research. This advancement is key to uncovering novel treatment options and is a critical step towards enhancing patient outcomes.”
— Piotr Sliz, Associate Professor, VP and Chief Research Information Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital
“Data is the only competitive advantage in AI and therefore, infrastructure that can simplify and scale data access is crucial for any organization training AI models. With a modern data platform fine-tuned for the performance and scale AI requires, VAST Data is well-positioned to capture a massive opportunity.”
— Sanjeev Mohan, Principal, SanjMo
