VAST has been named a winner of the 2026 SiliconANGLE TechForward Awards in the AI-Optimized Data Platforms category, recognizing the VAST AI Operating System as a technology helping redefine how enterprises build and operate AI.
The TechForward Awards recognize technologies and solutions driving business forward, with SiliconANGLE applying an editorial lens to innovations reshaping how businesses operate. VAST was selected for its ability to bring data, compute, database, and AI services together on a unified platform designed for the demands of modern AI.
The recognition comes at a time of accelerating momentum for VAST and for the broader shift toward AI-native data infrastructure. Just this summer VAST has:
Announced a strategic strategic partnership with Cloudera to deliver AI factories across on-premises and public-cloud environments
And expanded our partnership with CrowdStrike to bring cybersecurity across the AI infrastructure and data layers
Delivered a validated blueprint with NVIDIA for deploying high performance infrastructure
AI’s progress ultimately depends on something more fundamental than compute: data. The most powerful GPUs in the world cannot create value without fast, reliable access to the data they need to train models, serve inference, and power autonomous applications.
As AI workloads evolve, so does the data challenge. Training requires massive, sustained throughput. Inference introduces new access patterns around prefill, decode and increasingly persistent context. Agentic applications add another layer of complexity, bringing together retrieval, databases, event streams and data from multiple systems as agents execute tasks across the enterprise.
That is why the data layer can no longer be a collection of disconnected systems stitched together around the AI stack. The VAST AI OS brings these capabilities together in a single platform, allowing data to move through AI pipelines with less latency, higher throughput and fewer layers of infrastructure to manage. The result is a simpler architecture with the performance and economics required to keep AI workloads moving.
And the stakes will only increase as organizations deploy teams of AI agents that operate at machine speed. When thousands of agents can execute tasks simultaneously, data infrastructure cannot become the bottleneck that limits what those agents can accomplish.
Today's TechForward Award is recognition of that shift and of the role data infrastructure will play in determining how far AI can go.
