Vast Data, an AI infrastructure startup, reaches $30 billion valuation on strong demand for specialized data-storage chips

Vast Data announced a $30 billion valuation, making it one of the few AI-era startups to reach unicorn status. The company builds hardware and software that stores and retrieves massive amounts of data at high speed — a critical bottleneck for training and running large AI models.

Unlike general-purpose data storage, Vast Data's systems are optimized specifically for AI workloads: they can shuffle massive datasets (gigabytes per second) and keep up with GPUs (processors) that would otherwise sit idle waiting for data. This eliminates a major source of wasted compute time and cost.

For businesses investing in AI — cloud providers, research labs, and enterprises training their own models — faster data access directly lowers the cost of AI infrastructure. A startup or lab that can train a model in weeks instead of months also reaches production faster, creating competitive advantage.