VAST Data has named its first ever chief financial officer in what could be a sign that it is edging closer to an IPO.
Putting aside the fact it seems strange that VAST has never had a CFO before, despite already raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, it has now selected and hired a very experienced bean counter.
Appointee Amy Shapero was previously the CFO at e-commerce giant Shopify. “As the company prepares for its next stage of growth, this strategic appointment will enable VAST to scale faster, better serve customers and further expand VAST’s global business,” says a VAST statement.
Shapero is said to have played a major role in raising Shopify’s annual revenue from $700 million to nearly $6 billion in less than five years, before leaving the company in 2022. Her previous work spans private and public technology companies in commerce, financial services, marketing, and information services.
According to her LinkedIn profile she has been an “advisor/mentor” to pre-IPO companies and founders, from November 2022 until this month and joining VAST.
Jeff Hoffmeister is the current CFO at Shopify after joining in October 2022. Shapero left Shopify after the company’s third quarter 2022 earnings announcement on October 27, 2022. Her exit at the time was part of a broader C-suite reshuffle at Shopify. On her departure, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke had said: “I want to thank Amy for her significant contributions to our company. Over the past five years, Amy has been an important partner in helping to advance our strategy.”
Considering her pre-IPO advisor activity before joining VAST, the company seemingly wants to tap into that expertise following its past funding raises. VAST, founded in 2016, raised $40 million in an 2018 A-round, $40 million in a 2019 B-round, $100 million in a 2020 C-round, $83 million in a 2021 D-round, and $118 million in an E-round in 2023. That’s an impressive total of $381 million raised.
As a private company, VAST does not publicly disclose its sales figures, but at Blocks & Files we believe the firm’s sales growth is very solid, and that it may well be profitable or near-profitable. Such a state is, of course, an ideal pre-IPO state.
In December last year, VAST said it had tripled revenue year-on-year, and passed the $200 million annual recurring revenue point at the end of September, as sales responded to a surge in generative AI workloads. It was then valued at $9.1 billion, and had had a positive cash flow for several years, with a gross margin of nearly 90 percent. VAST Co-founder Jeff Denworth said the company would consider an IPO filing at the right time. It had not hired banks for a public listing, but a 2024 IPO could be “on the cards”, depending on the market conditions, according to Denworth.
Blocks & Files has asked whether VAST is now nearer to declaring an IPO plan with the appointment of Shapero. We will update this story when we get a response.
“Amy’s extensive finance, strategy, and operating experience with disruptive, mission-driven, high-growth companies like ours will prove invaluable as VAST continues to scale and expand at a rapid pace,” said Renen Hallak, CEO and co-founder of VAST Data, in a company statement.
Shapero will oversee all financial operations, including budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, and investor relations. In addition, she will play a “key role” in shaping the company’s strategic direction, added VAST, ensuring alignment between financial goals and business objectives by fostering a “dynamic finance team” to support customers, partners and product development.
“From my first conversations with Renen and the VAST leadership team, it was immediately clear to me that this is an exceptional company, with brilliant leadership and an incredible opportunity in front of us as AI’s impact grows,” said Shapero in another company statement. “I’ve always been data-driven, and throughout my career I’ve helped companies to harness data for insights to improve their customer experience, innovate to build new products, and use economies of scale to create new value.”
VAST’s unified AI data platform features an all-flash-based storage architecture, a “next-gen” database to organize all structured and unstructured data across a global namespace, and containerized Data Engine services running on connected DPU, CPU or GPU servers to power AI. The Data Engine provides the functional underpinnings for AI applications. VAST has moved on from its all-flash storage base and now has a multi-layered, AI-focussed software stack that extends beyond its storage arrays to run on servers.
