(Picture courtesy VAST Information)
It’s not each day that you just see a brand new working system launched. However VAST Information at this time claims to have completed precisely that with the launch of what it’s calling a brand new working system for AI. The VAST AI Working System builds on the corporate’s present information and AI infrastructure developments and provides prospects the power to construct and run AI purposes utilizing their very own information.
VAST Information says we’d like a brand new working system as a result of we’re on the “daybreak of a brand new computing paradigm.” Simply because the PC, cellular, and cloud revolutions gave us new abstractions of complexity, the brand new agentic AI world calls for a brand new software program layer to democratize using new {hardware}.
The period of deep studying has created the necessity for a brand new working system that may rework AI infrastructure into “easy to make use of and scalable machines,” VAST Co-founder Jeff Denworth says in a video launched at this time.
“To us it’s develop into abundantly clear that the methods through which deep studying workloads are computing look completely nothing just like the enterprise programs of yesterday,” Denworth says. “We’re shortly shifting to an age the place there shall be hundreds of thousands of GPUs and each conventional system will break beneath the load of this computing energy as a result of they had been by no means designed for this scale and this depth.”
(Picture courtesy VAST Information)
The VAST crew has been constructing out its information platform since Denworth, Renen Hallak, and Shachar Fienblit, co-founded the corporate a couple of decade in the past. VAST took a clean-sheet method to constructing its platform round NVMe drives utilizing its Disaggregated and Shared All the pieces, or DASE, idea.
The primary factor of the brand new DASE method with VAST Information Platform was the VAST DataStore, which gives massively scalable object and file storage for structured and unstructured information. Subsequent was the DataBase, which capabilities as a desk retailer and gives information lakehouse performance just like Apache Iceberg. Then it launched the DataEngine, which gives the potential to execute capabilities on information. Subsequent got here DataSpace, which gives a worldwide namespace for storing, retrieving, and processing information from the cloud to the sting.
In October, the New York firm unveiled the InsightEngine, which makes use of Nvidia Inference Microservices (NIMs) from Nvidia and was the primary new utility designed to run atop the platform. In early 2025, the corporate introduced help for block storage and real-time occasion streaming by way of an Apache Kafka-compatible API. In April the corporate added a number of GenAI capabilities, together with help for vector search and retrieval; serverless triggers and capabilities; and fine-grained entry management.
VAST Co-Founder Jeff Denworth
Right this moment’s launch of the VAST Working System for AI hinges on the launch of yet another piece of the puzzle (what we surmise is an important piece, since its inclusion permits VAST to have what it claims is a wholly new working system). That new element known as the VAST AgentEngine.
In response to VAST, the AgentEngine options an “AI agent software server” that permits brokers to invoke information, metadata, capabilities, and execute Net searches, or name different brokers utilizing Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP), an rising customary for agentic AI created by Anthropic in late 2024. Brokers can assume completely different personas and deal with completely different duties utilizing completely different safety credentials, VAST says, whereas scheduling and tracing mechanisms present for environment friendly job completion and resiliency.
VAST says it’ll launch one open supply AI agent monthly to run on its AI OS. Among the examples of brokers embrace: a reasoning chatbot; a knowledge engineering agent; a immediate engineer; an “agent agent” to assist work with and enhance different agent; a compliance agent; an editor agent; and a life sciences agent to assist with analysis.
(Picture courtesy VAST Information)
Each technological revolution began with new {hardware} and finally led to new working programs, VAST CEO and Co-founder Hallak says. As an illustration, the PC revolution gave us Home windows and Mac OS, the Web revolution gave us networking protocols and the Net browser, whereas cellular computing gave us Android and iOS.
“It’s the working system, agnostic to the {hardware} beneath and purposes above, which defines these revolutions and create probably the most worth by democratizing new {hardware} and utility adoption,” Hallak says in a video posted at this time. “AI will dwarf all the earlier computing brokers in each measurement and velocity.”
“Within the Nineteen Seventies, solely laptop scientists might function computer systems. With Home windows everybody might,” he says. “Right this moment we’re at that very same inflection level with respect to AI. Whoever builds the AI working system will democratize AI by making it easy, by making it safe, and by making it accessible to everybody.”
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