Vast Data Bookings Run Rate Grew 3.8X Y/Y in FY22

Highlights:
Third consecutive record-breaking year
• Exiting its third year with a bookings run rate of nearly $300 million at 90% gross margin, 3.8x Y/Y
• Cash-flow positive since the last funding round, powered by a $1.2 million ASP
• Net revenue retention of over 300%; recommended by 100% of customers surveyed
• Becoming the data foundation for a $400 billion AI Data Platform opportunity

VAST Data Ltd. unveiled its global growth during FY22 (ending January 31, 2022).

During this period, it saw unprecedented customer adoption and diversification, financial performance, and international expansion. Its Data Universal Storage software is now entrusted by customers to manage and process over 3EB of information globally.

In its third year of selling, it grew 3.8x year Y/Y, closing out the year at a nearly $300 million software bookings run rate. It ended its year cash flow positive, only adding to its cash balance since its series D funding was announced in April of 2021.

Success metrics and business strategies that supported company’s hypergrowth in FY22 include:
• Customer Growth. The firm more than doubled its customer roster Y/Y expanding across industries including autonomous driving, life sciences, M&E, financial trading, and government institutions with increasing demand in new market segments. On average, software manages around 12PB per customer, with its largest customer having already selected firm’s software to manage more than 240PBs of data.
• Predictable and Scalable Business. Customers continue to scale their investments. Net revenue retention exceeded 300% during FY22, demonstrating massive data growth and confidence in Universal Storage from existing customers.
• Universal Storage Loved. The company received high marks as noted through the Gartner Peer Insights anonymous customer review program. Customers have exhibited the highest recommender rating, with 100% of the organizations submitting reviews saying they would recommend Universal Storage.
• WW Expansion. The company expanded operations across 5 continents, building out new teams in the UK, France, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Czech Republic, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and Korea. FY23 will see additional expansion in the Benelux region, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the Nordics, and Japan. Additionally, the company nearly doubled headcount from the previous year, and expects to continue this growth trajectory during FY23.
• Seamless Software Offering. In April 2021, announced its Gemini offering, a new business model that combines the commercial advantages of software with the simple appliance experience customers love, aligning firm’s operating objectives with the needs of its customers. The adoption of the Gemini model across customers has been rapid, resulting in strong annual recurring revenue and a business model built on software gross margins.
• Disrupting Legacy Strongholds, Accelerating New Discoveries. Over the past year, customers turned to Universal Storage platform to help solve their strategic data challenges. For AI, the vendor is working with companies like NVIDIA to make the shift from experimental to production AI in the enterprise. For data protection, it is bucking the traditional model of purpose-built backup appliances, working with partners like Commvault, to bring rapid backups and fast restores for instant data recovery in the event of a ransomware attack, disaster or rogue employee. And for data analytics, customers like Agoda (a Booking Holdings subsidiary) selected the software company as the data science backbone for its big data and ML environment.

In looking at the recent history of start-up companies across the enterprise data stack, VAST outpaces the time horizon to $300 million annual run rate. It was able to reach this key software-only milestone in 3 years of selling, whereas many of today’s most successful software and SaaS companies have needed up to a decade to achieve a similar milestone.

“It’s not hyperbolic to say that data means everything,” said founder and CEO Renen Hallak. “From groundbreaking medical research to award-winning cinematic experiences, VAST’s customers are working to expand the boundaries of what’s possible in various aspects of our daily lives. Our singular goal is to empower AI-driven innovation with accessible, infinitely scalable data intelligence. What we’ve accomplished in just a few years’ time is incredible – and we’re just getting started.”

AI continues to be driving the need for new high-performance data platforms that can easily scale as organizations’ data demands grow. This significant growth comes as ARK Invest and others predict that the market capitalization of AI software and hardware companies could scale at a roughly 50% annualized rate, hitting $87 trillion by 2030. Of that, the data platforms that power AI are predicted to represent a $400 billion market over the next decade.

Universal Storage platform has created a next-gen all-flash data platform that addresses the challenges and compromises of scale, performance, efficiency, and cost, to better meet the demands of today’s data-deluged and AI-powered enterprises in a new era of machine intelligence. Maintaining consistent application uptime and integrity is equally important to realizing the key feature benefits of Universal Storage. The company surpassed a milestone over the past year, reaching 99.9999% data availability across the install base.

“The way organizations interact with data has morphed tremendously over the past two decades, and legacy solutions are no longer compatible with modern needs,” said Tom Mendoza, current board member and former president and vice chairman at NetApp. “By simplifying data architecture and eliminating the need to choose between performance and cost, VAST has raised the bar for this industry.“

“Only a few enterprise storage vendors have started with a blank sheet of paper to create a SDS architecture optimized for hyperscale storage and computing technologies, and VAST Data is far and away the most successful of these vendors,” said Eric Burgener, research VP, infrastructure systems group, IDC. “Its continued revenue growth rates make a compelling argument that this is the storage architecture of the digitally transformed future.”

“VAST Data has quickly established itself as a standout in the crowded data infrastructure market, charting a unique path to becoming one of the leading data platform companies for the AI future,” said Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner at Futurum Research.

Resources
• Additional insights about the company
• Read Moor Insights & Strategy business on VAST that explores the company’s success over the past year and opportunities in the years to come.