VAST Data Closes Series F at $30 Billion Valuation — Positioning Its AI Operating System at the Centre of a New Infrastructure Stack
AI / AI Tech Trends | 4 min read
VAST Data (New York; remote-first; the AI Operating System company; Founder and CEO Renen Hallak; founded 2016), has announced the closing of its Series F financing at a $30 billion valuation — more than a threefold increase from its $9.1 billion Series E valuation in late 2023. The round was led by Drive Capital, with Access Industries as co-lead, and included participation from existing investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, NEA, and NVIDIA, alongside new investors. The financing included both primary and secondary capital, bringing the total transaction value to approximately $1 billion. Primary proceeds will be used to solidify VAST's position as the AI operating system at the centre of the AI ecosystem and to fuel global growth — including strategic transactions that expand its technology footprint and partnerships.
"We are already supporting AI environments spanning millions of GPUs globally, operating across every layer of the AI stack. What is becoming clear is that these layers are no longer independent. Applications, models, and infrastructure now operate as a single system through data. VAST sits at the center of how that system works, which is why we are seeing this level of demand at global scale."
— Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO, VAST Data
The VAST AI OS — DASE Architecture and the Collapse of the Stack
Founded in 2016 at the dawn of deep learning, VAST Data reimagined distributed systems from a blank sheet of paper for a future where AI would demand a fundamentally new approach to data and compute. The company created DASE (Disaggregated Shared Everything) — described as the world's first true parallel distributed system architecture — which eliminates the longstanding tradeoffs between scale, simplicity, performance, and cost that have constrained traditional storage systems. Today, the VAST AI Operating System sits at the centre of that transformation, unifying data, compute, and real-time processing into a single system. This architecture collapses traditionally separate layers of the stack — enabling organisations to build, train, and run AI models while simultaneously powering the applications and agents that depend on them, all at global scale. From CoreWeave to Lowe's, from the US Air Force to Cursor, thousands of organisations rely on VAST to store, contextualise, and act on data — supporting environments that power millions of GPUs and some of the world's most advanced AI training and inference initiatives.
"The scale and speed of AI adoption are creating a new class of infrastructure company. VAST is emerging as the clear leader in this category, with the architecture and momentum to support the world's most demanding AI environments. The step-change in valuation reflects both that momentum and our conviction in VAST's role at the center of this market."
— Chris Olsen, Co-Founder and Partner, Drive Capital
Financial Momentum — $4B Cumulative Bookings, $500M CARR, and a Rule of X Score of 228%
VAST Data has surpassed $4 billion in cumulative bookings and exited the previous fiscal year with more than $500 million in Committed Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR) — alongside positive operating margin and positive free cash flow. In its most recent fiscal year, VAST Data delivered a Rule of X score of 228% — a combined measure of revenue growth rate and free cash flow margin that reflects the rare combination of rapid growth and strong profitability that is increasingly valued by investors as AI infrastructure companies scale into their second decade. This financial profile — characterised by VAST as reflecting "growth and profitability" simultaneously — positions it as a durably competitive partner for the world's largest AI environments, where customers are prioritising infrastructure vendors that are building sustainable, long-term businesses. The AI buildout is approaching an industrial scale that VAST describes as potentially approaching $100 trillion in value — spanning AI factories, software systems, and a new era of parallel computing at levels previously unimaginable.
Key Takeaways
- • VAST Data (New York; remote-first; Founder and CEO Renen Hallak; founded 2016; the AI Operating System company) has closed its Series F financing at a $30 billion valuation — announced 22 April 2026. More than 3× its $9.1 billion Series E valuation (late 2023). Led by Drive Capital (co-founder and partner Chris Olsen); co-lead Access Industries; existing investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, NEA, NVIDIA; new investors. Total transaction value: ~$1 billion (primary + secondary capital).
- • The VAST AI OS: consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform — enabling organisations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on DASE (Disaggregated Shared Everything) — the world's first true parallel distributed system architecture eliminating tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience. Architecture collapses traditionally separate layers of the stack into a single unified system: applications, models, and infrastructure now operate as one through data.
- • Financial metrics: $4B+ cumulative bookings. $500M+ Committed Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR). Positive operating margin. Positive free cash flow. Rule of X score: 228% — reflecting the rare combination of rapid revenue growth and strong profitability that makes VAST a durably competitive AI infrastructure partner. Primary proceeds: solidify position as the AI operating system at the centre of the AI ecosystem; fuel global growth; execute strategic transactions expanding technology footprint and partnerships.
- • Customer ecosystem: CoreWeave, Lowe's, US Air Force, Cursor, Mistral AI, JPMorganChase, Crusoe — thousands of organisations rely on VAST to store, contextualise, and act on data at AI scale. Timothée Lacroix (Co-Founder and CTO, Mistral AI): VAST's data platform enables efficient management and scaling of massive datasets required to train frontier models. Larry Feinsmith (MD, Head of Global Tech Strategy, JPMorganChase): VAST is a key enabling technology for next-gen AI infrastructure, providing a modern flexible data architecture for GenAI applications and agentic workflows. Erwan Menard (SVP Product Management, Crusoe): partnership with VAST has grown 10× in the past year — many model labs, AI agent companies, and physical AI pioneers rely on the platform.
- • Strategic significance: the $30B valuation and 3× step-change from Series E reflects a structural shift in how the AI infrastructure market is being valued — not just compute and model companies, but the data layer that connects them. Renen Hallak's framing captures why: "Applications, models, and infrastructure now operate as a single system through data." AI infrastructure is consolidating around vendors that provide the unified data, compute, and agentic execution layer — not those that provide any one of these independently. VAST's $100T market framing and Drive Capital's "new class of infrastructure company" language both signal that investors are treating AI infrastructure platforms with the same long-term conviction that defined the enterprise software platform era.