The vast amount of data that provides an AI-friendly data storage platform is in the market to raise new rounds with a major leap in valuation.
Earlier this year, the 9-year-old company was sought a valuation of around $25 billion, according to anyone familiar with the deal. If that were achieved, it would be a massive jump from the $9 billion Series e rating set aside in December 2023.
The person said the contract was not finalized and the terms could change, adding that despite impressive growth, the ratings requested were high at the time. Many VCs are interested in and watch the vastness, other sources told TechCrunch.
Vast did not respond to requests for comment.
The vast amount of data provides data management software combined with Unified CPUs, GPUs and data hardware from vendors such as Supermicro, HPE, and Cisco. Old school data storage options rely on tiers (low-cost storage options for long-term storage, high-end options for more frequently used data), but they aim to eliminate such tiers. This is especially targeted at flash storage.
AI was a boon for a vast business. The company's platform stores structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data in one place, accelerates data acquisition and reduces the costs of model training and inference.
The company's customers include large companies such as Pixar, ServiceNow and Xai, as well as next-generation AI cloud providers such as CoreWeave and Lambda.
According to TechCrunch, when it raised the Series E about 18 months ago, it reported a huge $200 million annual recurring revenue (arr). The company is growing 2.5 to 3 times the year-on-year, Vast CEO and co-founder Renen Hallak said in a podcast last May. The company also has positive free cash flow for four years, Hallak said.
As for data storage capabilities, it competes with the publicly released pure storage of 16-year-olds, with a massive $17 billion market capitalization and 12-year-old Weka. Vast develops a competitive database architecture with Databricks delivery.
Before the round it is currently working on, the company has raised a total of $381 million from investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, NEA, Bond Capital and Drive Capital.