United StatesRenen Hallak
Holds a BA and an MSc in computer science, both summa cum laude, with an academic grounding in complexity theory and cryptography. After early roles building a content distribution system at Intercast and serving on the CTO team at Time to Know, he joined all-flash array pioneer XtremIO in 2009 as its first engineer, rising to VP of R&D and leading a team of more than 200 engineers as the product grew from inception past $1 billion in revenue following EMC's 2012 acquisition. In 2016 he founded VAST Data with Shachar Fienblit, Jeff Denworth, and Alon Horev, spending three years in stealth building the DASE (Disaggregated Shared-Everything) architecture before launching in February 2019. As CEO he has scaled VAST into the data platform of the AI buildout — past $4 billion in cumulative bookings and $500 million in committed ARR — launched the VAST AI Operating System in 2025, and closed an approximately $1 billion Series F at a $30 billion valuation in April 2026 with backers including NVIDIA.
