huge amount of dataObviously a pun, I’m raising it. Huge Total amount of cash.
The New York-based startup offers scale-out, unstructured data storage designed to eliminate tiered storage (i.e., setups that move data between high- and low-cost storage hardware). solutions, and today announced that it has secured $118 million for the series. The E round was led by Fidelity Ventures with participation from New Enterprise Associates, BOND Capital, Drive Capital, Nvidia, Dell, Goldman Sachs, Tiger Global, Commonfund, Norwest, 83North, Greenfield, and Next47.
The round values Vast at $9.1 billion post-money, bringing the startup’s total funding to $381 million.
“The explosion of interest in AI over the past year and the need for modern infrastructure that can support these workloads has been a boon for Vast’s business, and the company is poised for continued growth and enterprise adoption. We are well positioned for this,” said Renen, co-founder and CEO of Vast. Hallak told TechCrunch in his email interview. “Given the future-proofing of Vast’s services, data-driven organizations see Vast as a valuable investment in the future of their business.”
Hallak co-founded Vast in 2016 with Jeff Denworth, Shachar Fienblit (previously held leadership roles at Kaminario and IBM), and Alon Horev (ex-Cisco and IBM). In Hallak’s words, the co-founders shared a vision to create the next generation data management platform. It leverages commodity hardware to provide fast access to large datasets for AI workloads.
Vast’s founding team then designed a new storage architecture and software infrastructure layer, which they operated in stealth until 2019, when the company began selling to customers.
Today, Vast is a platform built to power AI and GPU-accelerated workloads across data centers and clouds, integrating storage, database, and compute engine services. With Vast, customers can manage unstructured and structured data, from video and images to text, data streams, and edge device data, across their preferred private, public, or hybrid clouds.
“Stitching together traditional enterprise infrastructure is slow, complex, inefficient, and expensive,” Hallak said. “Traditional cloud recipes for building AI infrastructure consist of disparate technologies that, due to the underlying architecture, cannot take full advantage of the latest technologies that offer improved performance, simplified operations, and reduced costs. It has been… [And] Without the right infrastructure, organizations cannot take advantage of the data access required for AI and deep learning to effectively execute on AI and GPU-powered investments. ”
Although Vast competes with vendors such as Databricks, Hallak claims his company has a substantial first-mover advantage. Judging by Vast’s book, there seems to be some truth to that.
Vast’s annual recurring revenue now stands at $200 million, and the company, which recently entered into a strategic partnership with HPE, is growing 3.3x year over year, Hallak said. His cash flow has been positive over the past 12 months, and Vast’s customer base has grown to include brands such as Pixar and Zoom.
Vasto, which currently has more than 700 employees worldwide, plans to launch a new division to expand its reach, with a focus on Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Europe.
“Vast is a software company that works with commodity hardware, so the pandemic and supply chain issues that have plagued many companies over the past few years have not had a material impact on Vast, its partners and customers,” Hallak said. he said. “While Vast has continued to grow, expand, and operate efficiently, this new investment is a great opportunity for Vast to deliver a new category of infrastructure that puts data at the center of how systems think, react, and discover.” It will further our mission.”