VAST Data poised for $30B valuation
VAST Data
A $30 billion round would signal that investors now see VAST as more than a storage vendor, they see it as core AI data infrastructure with room to expand into a much larger software layer. That jump from a $9.1 billion valuation in December 2023 is being driven by fast ARR growth, large seven and eight figure customer commitments, and the fact that AI clusters need a data layer that can feed GPUs at full speed without forcing customers to stitch together separate storage, catalog, and processing tools.
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The valuation step up is large, but it is tied to real business scale. VAST was at about $200 million ARR in January 2025, projected $600 million ARR by 2026, and had already passed $1 billion in cumulative software bookings by late 2023 while remaining free cash flow positive.
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What makes VAST valuable is deal size and product scope. It sells into petabyte scale environments where customers often commit more than $1 million a year, and the biggest customers spend more than $100 million over time because VAST replaces multiple boxes and software layers with one system.
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The closest public comparison is Pure Storage, which competes in AI storage but does not bundle the same database and compute layer. The strategic comparison is closer to an AI era Nutanix for data, or a private market infrastructure platform like CoreWeave, where investors pay up for control over a bottleneck in AI buildouts.
The next phase is VAST using this valuation and capital base to become the default data plane for AI factories, GPU clouds, and large enterprise model deployments. If it keeps turning storage wins into broader platform adoption, its value will be set less by storage multiples and more by whether it becomes a standard layer in AI infrastructure.