# Renen Hallak

> Renen Hallak is the Israeli-born, New York-based co-founder and CEO of VAST Data. A computer scientist trained in computational complexity, he moved from being XtremIO's first engineer to leading hundreds of engineers, then started VAST in 2016 around a contrarian idea: the storage tradeoff between speed and capacity could be designed away. VAST has since expanded that architecture into an AI data and computing platform and closed a 2026 financing at a $30 billion valuation.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at VAST Data
- **Organizations:** VAST Data, XtremIO, Dell EMC, Intercast, Time To Know
- **From:** Jerusalem, Israel
- **Nationality:** Israeli
- **Education:** B.A. in Computer Science, summa cum laude, M.Sc. in Computer Science, summa cum laude; specialization in computational complexity
- **Known for:** Joined XtremIO as its first engineer and later led its R&D organization as vice president, overseeing more than 200 engineers., Led architecture and development of XtremIO's all-flash array through more than $1 billion in revenue., Co-founded VAST Data in 2016 and led it through its 2019 public launch.

## Career timeline

- **2007-2009** — Co-authored academic research on private approximation of clustering and vertex cover, published in Computational Complexity in 2009.
- **Before 2009** — Worked on the CTO team at Time To Know and served as chief architect at Intercast, where he developed a content-distribution system from inception to initial deployment.
- **2009** — Joined XtremIO at its inception as the first engineer.
- **2009-2015** — Rose to vice president of R&D at XtremIO and, after its acquisition by EMC, led a research and development organization of more than 200 engineers.
- **2016** — Co-founded VAST Data with Shachar Fienblit, Jeff Denworth and Alon Horev to remove the traditional storage tradeoff between performance and capacity.
- **2019** — VAST emerged from stealth with its Universal Storage product; Goldman Sachs included Hallak among its 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of the year.
- **2022** — VAST ranked fifth on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.
- **2024** — BigDATAwire named Hallak a Person to Watch as VAST positioned its platform around data, databases and compute for AI.
- **2026** — VAST closed an approximately $1 billion Series F transaction at a $30 billion valuation and reported more than $4 billion in cumulative bookings and over $500 million in committed annual recurring revenue.

## Achievements

- Joined XtremIO as its first engineer and later led its R&D organization as vice president, overseeing more than 200 engineers.
- Led architecture and development of XtremIO's all-flash array through more than $1 billion in revenue.
- Co-founded VAST Data in 2016 and led it through its 2019 public launch.
- Built VAST around the DASE distributed-systems architecture, designed to separate compute from storage while presenting one shared system.
- Led VAST through a 2026 financing at a $30 billion valuation; the company reported more than $4 billion in cumulative bookings.
- Named one of Goldman Sachs' 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs in 2019.
- Named a BigDATAwire Person to Watch for 2024 and ranked No. 1 on CRN's 2025 list of IT innovators.
- Co-authored the peer-reviewed paper 'Private Approximation of Clustering and Vertex Cover' and is a named inventor on multiple data-storage patents.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Appeared on the Ground Level AI podcast to discuss the hidden infrastructure beneath AI and the governance of potentially millions of agents.
- **2026-05** — Discussed AI data movement, neoclouds and agent infrastructure on Megaport's Uplink podcast.
- **2026-04** — VAST Data announced an approximately $1 billion Series F transaction at a $30 billion valuation, with Hallak saying its systems support AI environments spanning millions of GPUs.
- **2026-03** — Delivered the opening keynote at the inaugural VAST Forward conference in Salt Lake City, presenting VAST's evolution from storage architecture toward an AI operating system.

## Links

- Website: https://www.vastdata.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renenh

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/renen-hallak
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-26