VAST Data — AI supply-chain exposure

VAST Data builds the storage and data-management software layer that sits underneath large GPU clusters. Rather than selling drives, it sells the system that lets thousands of accelerators read and write training data fast enough to stay fed — its platform underpins some of the biggest AI buildouts, including CoreWeave's. In the value chain it is an infrastructure supplier to the AI factory, the plumbing that moves data to and from compute.

Its structural hook is that compute scarcity has pushed attention onto everything that keeps GPUs busy, and storage is one of the quiet bottlenecks. As clusters grow, a data layer that can serve many accelerators at once without stalling becomes hard to rip out and replace, which is why the model places it inside the factory rather than beside it. It remains a supplier rather than a chokepoint, so its centrality reads as modest.