Vast Data Signs $1.17bn Deal With CoreWeave as AI Infrastructure Race Intensifies

AI infrastructure firm Vast Data has struck a $1.17 billion commercial agreement with CoreWeave, expanding their existing partnership to meet surging demand for computing power that fuels artificial intelligence systems.

The deal, which Vast confirmed to Reuters, marks one of the largest software and data infrastructure contracts in the fast-growing AI cloud sector.

Under the new agreement, CoreWeave, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, will adopt Vast as its primary data platform for managing and scaling its cloud infrastructure. CoreWeave’s cloud platform is designed to provide customers access to graphics processing units (GPUs), the hardware backbone for training and running large AI models.

Vast said contracts of this kind typically span three to five years, though the company declined to reveal specific revenue milestones or payment structures tied to the deal.

Founded in 2016, Vast Data specializes in building data management and storage software that enables companies to efficiently handle the massive datasets required to train and operate AI models. Its technology is designed to streamline how data is stored, accessed, and processed — an increasingly critical factor for firms competing in the AI arms race. The company charges clients based on capacity and the range of features used.

As part of the new partnership, Vast and CoreWeave plan to align their product development roadmaps to optimize data storage and retrieval for AI workloads. The collaboration aims to increase efficiency and performance across CoreWeave’s expanding GPU cloud ecosystem, which supports customers in AI, visual effects, and computational research.

The deepened alliance will allow Vast to work more closely with CoreWeave while maintaining relationships with other top-tier clients. Vast’s customer base includes major cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, AI startups like Elon Musk’s xAI, and other “neocloud” firms such as Nebius, according to Vast co-founder Jeff Denworth, who confirmed the details in an interview with Reuters.

The deal also highlights the accelerating investments in AI infrastructure, where companies like Nvidia, CoreWeave, and software firms such as Vast are emerging as the backbone of the generative AI economy. Vast’s platform helps power AI clusters that require enormous bandwidth and storage performance to handle the trillions of parameters used in modern neural networks.

For Vast, the CoreWeave contract represents a major commercial milestone and a validation of its position in the market. The New York-based company said it has been free cash flow positive and reached $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by January 2025 — a rare achievement among AI infrastructure startups.

The company’s strong financial footing could accelerate its fundraising plans. In August, Reuters reported that Vast was in talks to raise several billion dollars in new funding at a potential valuation of up to $30 billion, with possible investors including Alphabet’s CapitalG and Nvidia.

Vast was last valued at $9.1 billion following a 2023 funding round and is increasingly viewed by analysts as a likely IPO candidate. That speculation gained traction after the company hired Amy Shapero, former Chief Financial Officer of Shopify, in 2024 — a move widely interpreted as preparation for a potential public listing.

The new deal underscores the growing symbiosis between hardware providers like Nvidia, cloud firms such as CoreWeave, and data management platforms like Vast, which together form the unseen architecture behind today’s AI revolution.

With the AI market projected to exceed $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, infrastructure partnerships like this are expected to multiply. The expanded CoreWeave deal cements Vast’s status as one of the most strategically positioned startups in the AI supply chain — bridging the gap between compute power and data intelligence.