How much has VAST Data raised?

VAST Data has raised approximately $1.4 billion in disclosed equity financing across seven or more rounds spanning 2016 to April 2026. The capital is entirely equity — no disclosed debt facility has been announced — which reflects the company's sustained positive free cash flow since at least 2021. The company has never taken a down round; every funding event has been a valuation step-up, culminating in the $30 billion Series F in April 2026.

The April 2026 Series F totaled approximately $1 billion in combined primary and secondary capital, with more than $500 million from secondary transactions allowing early investors and employees to realize liquidity. Drive Capital led the primary tranche, with Access Industries (the family office of Len Blavatnik) as co-lead, and continued participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, NEA, and NVIDIA. The large secondary component is notable: it signals existing shareholders were establishing a market-clearing price for liquidity rather than seeking emergency exits — a distinction that suggests confidence in a near-term public offering.

The investor roster reflects both financial-return-focused growth funds and strategically motivated infrastructure players. 83North (Israeli-European VC) and Norwest Venture Partners seeded VAST in 2016; Dell Technologies Capital joined in 2018 as a strategic anchor, signaling early enterprise hardware channel validation. Next47 (Siemens' growth fund) led the Series C in 2020; Tiger Global led the aggressive Series D in 2021 at a 3x step-up.

Fidelity Management & Research Company led the Series E in December 2023, consistent with Fidelity's pattern of pre-IPO positions in category-defining private companies (Stripe, Databricks). NVIDIA's inclusion in both the Series E and Series F is the most strategically significant signal: VAST is embedded in NVIDIA's DGX cluster and BlueField-4 reference architectures, giving NVIDIA a direct financial incentive to make VAST the default storage layer for GPU clouds globally. Drive Capital (a Columbus, Ohio-based growth fund) led the Series F alongside Access Industries, a diversified global investment group known for long-hold positions in technology infrastructure.

The 3.3x valuation step-up between December 2023 ($9.1B) and April 2026 ($30B) reflects a genuine business inflection, not a re-rating. Between those two rounds, VAST grew from approximately $200 million ARR to roughly $2 billion in ARR run-rate by end of 2025 — approximately 10x ARR growth in 24 months. The company maintained positive operating margin throughout and expanded gross margins toward 90%, generating more than $100 million in free cash flow per quarter as of early 2026.

Two landmark commercial events accelerated the valuation step-up. First, xAI's Colossus deployment (200,000+ NVIDIA GPUs, announced 2024) established VAST as the storage platform for the world's largest GPU supercomputer. Second, the CoreWeave $1.17 billion multi-year commercial agreement signed November 2025 demonstrated that hyperscalers were willing to write nine-figure, long-dated commitments for VAST's platform — a category of customer commitment that commands premium multiples. The combined effect: $500M+ in committed ARR (CARR) entering FY2026, a Rule of X score of 228%, and a business profile that warranted a public-market-style valuation while still private.

VAST Data is operationally profitable on a free-cash-flow basis, reporting positive operating cash flow for more than five consecutive years and more than $100 million in FCF per quarter as of early 2026. This is exceptional for an infrastructure software company growing at approximately 3x per year, and stems from the capital-efficient subscription model (hardware at cost, software at near-100% gross margin) and long-dated contracts (5–7 years) that provide multi-year revenue visibility before the customer takes delivery.

The hire of Amy Shapero as VAST's first-ever CFO in August 2024 — Shapero previously scaled Shopify from $700 million to $6 billion in revenue and has served as CFO at Betterment and Sailthru — is the clearest public signal of IPO preparation. With a $30B valuation, ~$2B ARR run-rate, positive free cash flow, over $500M in CARR, and an experienced public-markets CFO, VAST is credibly positioned for a public offering in the second half of 2026 or 2027. No formal IPO date has been announced as of June 2026.

The April 2026 Series F funds aggressive global expansion across strategic transactions, technology partnerships, and new regions. For vendors targeting VAST, this translates to real and growing budget authority at the executive team level, aggressive headcount growth (26% year-over-year in 2025 with continued expansion post-Series F), and new territory opening in EMEA and APAC where VAST is actively building field sales and solutions engineering teams.

VAST's $500M+ CARR and sustained positive cash flow means sales cycles at VAST are driven by strategic fit and executive alignment, not budget availability. The buying committee is small and founder-led: C-suite approval (Hallak, Shapero) is required for commitments above $500K, and technical validation with CTO Alon Horev or CRDO Shachar Fienblit is typically required before a commercial conversation reaches Finance. Vendors with the strongest wedge are those who can demonstrate integration with VAST's AI OS stack or who serve the rapidly growing field sales, HR, and marketing operations functions that scale with headcount.