Vast Data, a data platform founded in Israel, is reportedly pursuing a new funding round that could raise its valuation to US$25 billion, according to TechCrunch, citing a person familiar with a deal.

This would represent an increase from its US$9.1 billion valuation in December 2023, when it secured US$118 million in a series E funding round.

The funding reflects a growing investor interest in infrastructure for AI.

Established in 2016 by Renen Hallak and Shachar Fienblit, Vast Data has evolved from a storage-focused company into an AI data platform that integrates storage, databases, and compute orchestration for large-scale AI workloads.

Earlier this week, Vast Data announced it has surpassed US$2 billion in cumulative bookings and achieved nearly fivefold year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2025.

🔗 Source: Calcalist

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ AI infrastructure companies demonstrate unprecedented valuation multipliers

VAST Data’s rise represents a pattern of accelerated valuation growth among critical AI infrastructure providers.

The company has demonstrated a clear trajectory: achieving a US$1.2 billion valuation in April 2020 1, tripling to US$3.7 billion by May 2021 2, reaching US$9.1 billion in December 2023, and now potentially approaching $25 billion.

This valuation acceleration has been supported by extraordinary business metrics, including 90% gross margins and a net revenue retention rate exceeding 300% as reported in 2022 3.

The trend suggests investors are placing premium valuations on companies that control critical layers of the AI stack, particularly those managing the massive datasets needed for AI training and inference.

This trend extends beyond VAST Data to the broader AI infrastructure sector, where companies that successfully evolve from basic infrastructure providers to strategic AI enablers can command software-like valuation multiples despite hardware components.

2️⃣ The exponential economics of data scale drives investor confidence

VAST Data’s growth reflects how managing massive data volumes creates compounding economic advantages.

By 2022, VAST was managing over three exabytes of data globally with an average of 12 petabytes per customer 3, creating both technical expertise and economies of scale that smaller competitors struggle to match.