VAST Data
A disaggregated all-flash data platform providing unified access via S3, NFS, and SMB protocols, optimized for AI and deep learning workloads with consistent low latency.
Summary
A disaggregated all-flash data platform providing unified access via S3, NFS, and SMB protocols, optimized for AI and deep learning workloads with consistent low latency.
VAST Data targets the convergence of AI/ML workloads and object storage. Its all-flash architecture eliminates the cold scan latency that plagues spinning-disk object stores, while the S3 interface maintains ecosystem compatibility.
- Not just object storage. VAST is a unified data platform where S3 is one of multiple access protocols. Evaluating it solely as an S3 alternative misses its multi-protocol value.
- All-flash means higher per-GB cost than HDD-based object stores. The value proposition is performance per dollar, not lowest cost per GB.
implementsS3 API — S3-compatible interfacesolvesCold Scan Latency — all-flash eliminates seek latency
Definition
A disaggregated, all-flash data platform providing S3-compatible object storage alongside file (NFS/SMB) and database access on a single unified architecture optimized for AI workloads.
AI/ML workloads need both high-throughput object storage and low-latency file access. VAST eliminates the need for separate storage systems by unifying all protocols on an all-flash platform with S3 compatibility.
AI/ML training data platform, unified NFS+S3 storage, high-performance analytics, GPU-direct data access.
Recent developments
- Series F at $30B valuation — $1B round led by NVIDIA's AI-storage bet. Per VAST Data's press release on the Series F financing (April 22, 2026), VAST closed a $1B Series F at a $30B valuation. NVIDIA participation flagged across coverage as the marquee AI-infrastructure signal — VAST's positioning as the unified storage substrate for AI-training data loops is now backed by the GPU vendor with the most direct interest in storage stops being the bottleneck.
- "Collapsing the Stack" strategy — own the AI data loop end-to-end. VAST's strategic frame for 2026 is consolidating the AI-data-pipeline tiers (object + file + database + lineage) onto a single all-flash platform — competing not just with object stores like FlashBlade and StorageGRID but with the broader "AI data lake + feature store + RAG infrastructure" surface that has historically been a multi-vendor patchwork. Per VAST — N=1: How VAST Built the De Facto Data Layer for AI.
- The financials behind the $30B (June 2026 detail) + the CoreWeave anchor. Coverage of the Series F put hard numbers on the valuation: $4B+ cumulative software bookings, $500M+ committed ARR, ~90% gross margins, and 300%+ net revenue retention — plus a landmark $1.17B commercial agreement with CoreWeave that makes VAST the default storage supplier to GPU-heavy neoclouds. Per Calcalist — VAST valuation soars to $30B and Futuriom — VAST hits $30B.
- From storage vendor to "AI Operating System" — native on BlueField-4. VAST's DASE (Disaggregated Shared Everything) architecture — stateless compute over a shared NVMe-oF flash pool — now bundles storage + a transactional database + a compute engine as one platform. Running a VAST CNode natively on NVIDIA BlueField-4 (STX reference architecture) enables zero-copy NVMe→GPU-VRAM paths via GPUDirect Storage + RDMA; VAST-reported benchmarks show a 90% inference-efficiency gain and a 20× Time-to-First-Token improvement when offloading KV caches to the tier. This is the same DPU-offload pattern the ROS2 ACM paper validates academically. Per VAST — N=1 data layer for AI.
Connections 5
Outbound 4
Inbound 1
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