Inside the AI Operating System Tackling Data Starvation as the UAE Scales GPU Capacity - The Recursive
VAST Data, an AI operating system company, is expanding its presence in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to help enterprises manage the data required for production AI workloads.
The Middle East is aggressively building the computing infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence, but a new challenge is emerging as governments and technology providers race to scale GPU capacity.
VAST Data, a company that evolved from a data storage provider into an AI operating system firm, is addressing this challenge by helping organizations manage the vast amounts of data required for production AI.
The company is expanding its regional footprint through a strategic partnership with Abu Dhabi's Core42 and by establishing a presence in Saudi Arabia to meet growing demand for sovereign and high-performance data infrastructure.
From Storage to AI Operating System
Dany Khoury, Regional Channel Director at VAST Data Middle East, joined the company in 2021 after an 18-year career in the region working with technology vendors like HP, Dell, EMC, and VCE.
He saw an opportunity for a new kind of data offering engineered specifically for data-intensive AI workloads and high-performance computing, leading him to join VAST Data.
The company initially entered the market with a Universal Storage approach to consolidate unstructured data, which represents a significant portion of the information used in AI workloads.
When you're looking at GPU-driven workloads, you have to think seriously about the data platform sitting behind them. You need a properly engineered data platform that avoids data starvation at the GPU level.
VAST Data has evolved its platform into an AI operating system capable of ingesting legacy data, making sense of it, and contextualizing it for AI applications.
Globally, the AI operating system is supporting more than three million GPUs, with customers recognizing that legacy storage solutions cannot sustain the requirements of these new workloads.
Sovereign AI Infrastructure
Sovereign AI and sovereign cloud infrastructure are critical topics in the UAE, where the country is taking a leading role in embracing sovereign infrastructure to ensure data governance and security.
VAST Data sits at the heart of the data sovereignty discussion by providing the underlying data platform with the security, governance, and control capabilities required to operate these environments.
The company recently announced VAST DataEnclave, a solution that uses confidential computing, hardware isolation, and cryptographic attestation to allow customers to keep sensitive data within trusted environments.
This approach enables customers to retain control of their data and keys while model providers retain control of their proprietary model weights.
Market Shift Toward Enterprises
While demand for AI infrastructure is currently led by governments and neocloud providers, VAST Data expects the market to shift increasingly toward enterprises as their AI adoption matures.
Enterprises are beginning to realize the value they can unlock from data sitting in silos, exploring how to consolidate it, generate insights, and improve business processes to become more competitive.
The company believes data is becoming the competitive edge, and organizations that cannot apply intelligence to their data will struggle to keep up.
VAST Data is working with large enterprise customers and major AI cloud infrastructure providers, including G42, CoreWeave, Nscale, Nebius, and Mistral.
Growth in Saudi Arabia
VAST Data has established an office in Saudi Arabia, where it is currently in discussions with several customers and already has existing customers through an OEM relationship with HPE.
The company is looking to expand further in the market while demonstrating how its platform can support fully sovereign AI data infrastructure.
Related
