VAST Data, the data infrastructure company for the artificial intelligence (AI) era, has launched its regional headquarters in Singapore to service the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.
This strategic expansion comes about four months after the company secured $118 million dollars in Series E funding, led by Fidelity Management and Research Company, and saw its valuation triple to $9.1 billion dollars, VAST Data said in a statement on Wednesday.
It is noted that at the end of the third quarter, VAST Data surpassed $1 billion in cumulative software bookings and achieved 3.3 times year-over-year growth.
Founded in 2016 and launched in 2019, VAST Data takes a new approach to marrying unstructured data with structured data by storing, processing and distributing that data from a single, unified system.
The firm’s global data infrastructure offering, VAST Data Platform, unifies storage, database and containerized compute engine services in a scalable system that was purpose-built for the future of AI.
“The VAST Data Platform was built with the entire data spectrum in mind so that natural data generated from all over the world can be analyzed in real-time,
Organizations are now able to make data-driven decisions that were once unthinkable,” said Renen Hallak, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of VAST Data.
According to him, the firm is democratizing access to data for AI and bringing the next era of AI computing in the mainstream.
“In packaging data storage and compute engine services in a scalable, unified platform, we are laying the foundation for enterprise structures to be AI-ready, so they can simplify and accelerate their machine learning and deep learning initiatives,” he added.
It is noted that VAST Data’s growth over the past year has been fuelled by enterprises ramping up their AI investments, particularly in generative AI.
This strategic expansion into Singapore and the APJ region at large well-positions VAST Data to capture the tailwinds of the growing digital economy and its AI boom.
Cited research from Infosys, VAST Data noted that APAC businesses will be tripling their spending on generative AI to $3.4 billion in 2024.
Further, it said Singapore is an established regional hub for data centers – 60 percent of the region’s data centers are located in the city-state, facilitating efficient data transfer between Asia and the rest of the world.
Moreover, Singapore is also home to many specialized cloud service providers (CSPs) propping up these data centers.
It is noted that CSPs are known for razor-thin margins and are fielding demands from enterprise, government and research institutions for graphics processing unit (GPU)-powered offerings.
The VAST Data Platform is purpose-built to deliver the scale, performance, security and operational efficiency that these CSPs need to build AI-based offerings.
“The VAST Data Platform provides an AI infrastructure that paves the way for automated exploration, capable of addressing some of the most intricate challenges faced by humanity,
“From the beginning, we have been collaborating closely with partners to break down technology trade-offs and barriers to build the next-generation AI infrastructure,” said Sunil Chavan, Vice-President, Asia Pacific and Japan, of VAST Data.
It is noted that VAST Data has collaborated with NVIDIA, the global leader in artificial intelligence computing, to design and deploy a new data platform architecture at CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider.
“Singapore, a global tech hub with pro-AI policies, is home to more than 1,000 cloud service providers and over 70 operational data centers,
“By situating our regional headquarters where our key collaborators are, we seek to work more closely with them, helping their customers transform their data into powerful generative AI applications, and opening the door to AI-assisted discovery,” said Chavan.
With applications across various domains, from finance to healthcare and beyond, the company believes it is uniquely positioned to support and manage data for these industry clouds, and will be hiring local teams to support regional demand.
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