VAST Data named in inaugural AI 100 private ranking

VAST Data has been included in the inaugural AI 100 ranking of private artificial intelligence companies, published by Newcomer in collaboration with Bessemer Venture Partners.

The ranking covers 100 private AI companies across categories including foundation models, AI infrastructure and compute, developer tools and agents, AI apps, vertical AI, security, physical AI and robotics, and deeptech and AI for science. Eligibility was limited to independent AI companies that had not undergone a majority strategic or private equity merger-and-acquisition transaction or a public listing.

VAST Data's inclusion places it among companies assessed on market leadership, estimated valuation, operating metrics, and people and culture. According to the methodology, those factors were weighted at 35%, 30%, 20%, and 15%, respectively.

VAST Data said the recognition reflects its position in AI infrastructure, where it supplies software used in large-scale AI environments. The company said its deployments span millions of graphics processing units globally and pointed to customer commitments announced earlier this year.

VAST Data describes its core product as an AI operating system that combines data, compute, and real-time processing in a single software platform. It says the system is designed to support organisations building, training, and deploying AI systems at scale.

Artificial intelligence infrastructure has become a closely watched segment of the technology market as investors and businesses look beyond model developers to the systems needed to store data, run workloads, and manage increasingly complex AI applications. The inclusion of infrastructure groups in the AI 100 suggests investors and industry observers see supporting software and hardware layers as central to the sector's economics.

In a statement on the ranking, Renen Hallak, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of VAST Data, said the company viewed the recognition as part of a broader shift in computing.

“The companies recognized on the AI 100 are creating an entirely new computing industry, and we're proud to be part of that transformation. As intelligence becomes embedded in every application, business and physical system, the infrastructure supporting it must evolve just as fundamentally. VAST has spent the past decade building an AI Operating System designed for this future, enabling data and compute to operate as one unified system at global scale. The momentum we're seeing today is validation of that vision and a reflection of how early we still are in realizing AI's full potential,” Hallak said.

Selection criteria

Newcomer and Bessemer Venture Partners positioned the AI 100 as a new benchmark for private AI businesses. They said the list was developed to reflect the unusual characteristics of the AI market, where revenue growth, spending on inference, speculative research activity, and robotics investment can produce very different company profiles.

Eric Newcomer, Founder of Newcomer, described the ranking as an attempt to capture those differences in a single list.

“The artificial intelligence startup set plays by its own rules: there are upstarts with unprecedented revenue growth, companies profiting off of seemingly insatiable inference spending, highly valued speculative research labs, and wildly ambitious robotics companies. These AI native startups are already reshaping the global economy. With our friends at Bessemer, we rethought what matters for the AI age, bringing together the most promising startups harnessing foundation models to transform our digital and physical world,” Newcomer said.

Bessemer Venture Partners also framed the ranking as an early marker of how value is being created across the AI sector, from infrastructure to applications and physical systems.

“The AI 100 puts a spotlight on the top 100 companies driving the AI economy forward, built by a generation of founders moving at a speed and scale we've never seen before. We're already seeing that exponential value creation play out across infra, AI applications, and physical AI. The remarkable part is that it's still early: this inaugural cohort is just the starting point, a natural evolution of our decade-long Cloud 100 franchise,” said Byron Deeter, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.

Infrastructure focus

For VAST Data, the recognition comes as AI infrastructure providers seek to establish themselves as core suppliers to model developers, cloud groups, and large enterprises. While much public attention has focused on chatbots, foundation models, and consumer-facing AI products, infrastructure companies argue that demand for storage, orchestration, and integrated compute systems will shape the commercial market just as strongly.

That backdrop has helped elevate companies working on the underlying architecture required for training and inference. In VAST Data's case, it has centred its pitch on combining data services and compute management in a unified software layer for AI workloads.

The AI 100's emphasis on both operating metrics and market position may also matter for private technology groups seeking validation in a crowded market. With many AI companies still privately held and often difficult to compare, curated rankings by investors and specialist media groups can influence visibility with customers, employees, and backers.

Bessemer Venture Partners said the AI 100 builds on its longer-running Cloud 100 franchise, which has tracked private cloud computing companies for the past decade. Deeter described the inaugural AI cohort as “just the starting point, a natural evolution of our decade-long Cloud 100 franchise”.