AI Operating System company VAST Data has announced at Microsoft Ignite a collaboration with Microsoft to power the next wave of agentic AI. Available soon to Azure customers, the VAST AI OS provides a simple way to deploy high-performance, scalable AI infrastructure in the cloud.

Enterprises will be able to access VAST’s complete suite of data services in Azure, including unified storage, data cataloguing, and database capabilities to support complex AI workflows. This integration will enable organisations to manage data seamlessly across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, delivering the scale, intelligence, and automation required to accelerate AI innovation.

The VAST AI Operating System will run on Azure infrastructure, enabling customers to deploy and operate it using the same tools, governance, security, and billing frameworks they have become accustomed to. The solution will deliver unified management, consistent performance, and Azure-grade reliability.

“This collaboration with Microsoft reflects our shared vision for the future of AI infrastructure, where performance, scale, and simplicity converge to enable enterprises to transform their business with agentic AI,” said Jeff Denworth, co-founder at VAST Data. “Becoming an Azure Partner represents the first milestone in that journey. Customers will be able to unify their data and AI pipelines across environments with the same power, simplicity, and performance they expect from VAST, now with the reach, elasticity, and reliability of Microsoft’s global cloud.”

Azure customers will be able to take full advantage of the capabilities of the VAST AI OS running on Azure including:

• Built for Agentic AI: Leverage VAST InsightEngine and AgentEngine to run intelligent, data-driven workflows directly where data lives. InsightEngine delivers stateless, high-performance compute and database services that accelerate vector search, RAG pipelines, and data preparation. AgentEngine orchestrates autonomous agents operating on real-time data streams, enabling continuous AI reasoning across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Performance at Scale for Model Builders: Designed for the demands of model training and inference, VAST AI OS keeps Azure GPU and CPU clusters saturated with high-throughput data services, intelligent caching, and metadata-optimised I/O to ensure predictable performance from pilot to multi-region scale. VAST benefits from the latest Azure Infrastructure solutions including the Laos VM Series using Azure Boost Accelerated Networking.
• Seamless Hybrid AI Workflows: An exabyte-scale DataSpace creates a unified global namespace that eliminates data silos and enables effortless data mobility. Customers can instantly burst from on-premises to Azure for GPU-accelerated workloads without migration or reconfiguration.
• Unified Data Access: VAST’s DataStore supports file (NFS, SMB), object (S3), and block protocols, while the VAST DataBase combines transactional performance with the query speed of a warehouse and the economics of a data lake, allowing diverse workloads to run on one platform without compromise.
• Elastic, Cost-Efficient Architecture: VAST’s Disaggregated, Shared-Everything (DASE) design enables independent scaling of compute and storage resources within Azure. Combined with built-in Similarity Reduction, the platform minimises storage footprint and reduces cost for large-scale AI infrastructure.

“VAST’s AI Operating System running on Azure will give Azure customers a high-performance, scalable platform built on the Laos VM Series using Azure Boost that seamlessly extends on-premises AI pipelines into Azure’s GPU-accelerated infrastructure,” said Aung Oo, Vice President, Azure Storage at Microsoft. “Many AI model builders in the world leverage VAST for its scalability, breakthrough performance, and AI-native capabilities. This collaboration can help our mutual customers streamline operations, reduce costs, and accelerate time-to-insight for AI workloads of every size.”

As Microsoft continues to invest in the future of AI infrastructure, including its own custom silicon initiatives, VAST will work closely with the Azure team to align on next-generation platform requirements. This collaboration positions VAST as a strategic element of Microsoft’s broader AI computing strategy, helping to unlock the full potential of emerging innovations in compute. Together, the companies will aim to ensure that future AI systems, regardless of the processor or model architecture, are fuelled by an AI operating system built for scale, performance, and simplicity.