VAST Data announces $1 billion Series F fund raise, tripling AI tech company's valuation to $30 billion

VAST Data, an AI operating system specialist whose customers include CVS and Lowe’s, has announced the closing of its Series F financing at a $30 billion valuation, representing more than a threefold increase from its $9.1 billion Series E valuation in late 2023.

The latest round was led by Drive Capital, with Access Industries acting as co-lead, and included participation from existing investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, NEA, and NVIDIA, alongside new backers.

The financing included primary and secondary capital, bringing the total transaction value to approximately $1 billion. Primary proceeds will be used to fuel global growth, including 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,” says Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO at VAST Data. “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 centre of how that system works, which is why we are seeing this level of demand at global scale.”

“The scale and speed of AI adoption are creating a new class of infrastructure company,” says Chris Olsen, Co-Founder and Partner at Drive Capital. “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 centre of this market.”

“As we push the boundaries of large-scale model training, the foundation of our infrastructure becomes critical,” says Timothée Lacroix, Co-Founder and CTO at Mistral AI. “VAST’s data platform enables us to efficiently manage and scale the massive datasets required to train frontier models, ensuring high performance and flexibility across our training pipelines.”

"The VAST platform is a key enabling technology for next gen AI infrastructure initiatives, providing a modern, flexible data architecture for Gen AI applications and agentic workflows," says Larry Feinsmith, Managing Director, Head of Global Tech Strategy, Innovation and Partnerships at JPMorganChase.

"Our partnership with VAST Data has grown more than 10x this past year and continues to accelerate - a reflection of how critical an AI data platform is to training and inference workloads on Crusoe Cloud. Together, we've built a storage service which many model labs, leading AI agent companies, and physical AI pioneers rely on. This milestone for VAST validates the essential role they play in helping us give AI infrastructure engineers and developers the seamless, industrial scale foundation they need to build the future of AI,” says Erwan Menard, SVP Product Management at Crusoe.

2026 RTIH Innovation Awards

AI will be a key focus area at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Our winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November.

Check out our 2025 winners here.

Our 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson.

In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “This is the awards’ fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”

“But I’m conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we’ve moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records.”

He added: “This year’s submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable.”

Congratulations to our winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Tiff Stevenson, and all those who attended our 2025 gathering.