# Vast AI: physical AI company

Canonical ID: `c0f955ba-d19a-4d93-9a31-ba9cc37e7668`

## Key facts

- **Business model:** Two-sided GPU rental marketplace: independent hosts and small datacenters list capacity, renters bid or pay on-demand
- **Founded:** June 2016 by [Jake Cannell](/people/jake-cannell.md) and [Christian Horne](/people/christian-horne.md)
- **Headquarters:** Los Angeles, California (relocated 2024); prior San Francisco office
- **GPU inventory:** ~17,000+ GPUs across 350+ independent hosts (company disclosure, 2024); exact H100/H200/B200 mix not published
- **Datacenter footprint:** ~40+ datacenters worldwide, all owned by third-party hosts; Vast owns no facilities
- **Pricing tiers:** On-demand (per-second billing), Reserved (up to 50% off, 1/3/6 month terms), Interruptible bid market (50%+ cheaper); exact per-GPU rates dynamic, not published statically
- **GPU generation mix:** Mixed datacenter and consumer parts: H100, H200, A100 alongside RTX 4090 and RTX 3090; consumer GPU coverage is a Vast differentiator
- **Product tiers:** GPU Cloud (marketplace), Clusters (multi-node), Secure Cloud (audited datacenters), Serverless inference
- **Positioning:** Long-tail researcher and inference customers; explicitly not competing for hyperscaler anchor tenants or hundred-megawatt buildouts
- **Employees:** ~40 as of 2025 (company About page)
- **Funding:** [No venture round publicly disclosed; appears bootstrapped](/investors.md) ([see investors](/investors.md))
- **Public/private:** Private, US-incorporated

- **Slug:** vast-ai
- **Status:** active
- **Founded:** 2016
- **HQ:** Los Angeles, California, USA

## Models

_No models registered._

## Current leadership (2)

- [Christian Horne](/people/christian-horne.md) Co-founder (_reported, not verified_)
- [Jake Cannell](/people/jake-cannell.md) CEO and Co-founder (_reported, not verified_)

## Supplies to

_No verified supply relationships on file. Supply-chain coverage is being added across the registry; check back as the seed populates this company's outbound edges._

_Outbound supply edges. Each appears when verified with at least two strong sources. Sources are append-only; corrections add new sources rather than rewrite history._

## Common questions

### What is Vast AI?

Vast AI runs a two-sided GPU rental marketplace that aggregates compute from independent hosts and small colocation operators, then rents it to researchers, startups, and inference workloads by the second. Unlike hyperscale neoclouds such as CoreWeave or Lambda that own or master-lease their datacenters, Vast is asset-light: the company is the exchange, the hosts own the hardware. That posture puts consumer GPUs (RTX 4090, RTX 3090) alongside datacenter parts (H100, H200, A100) on the same order book, with prices set dynamically by supply and demand across roughly 40-plus datacenters worldwide.

### What does Vast AI make?

Vast AI has no robot models recorded on the DEPLOY registry.

### Is Vast AI publicly traded?

Vast AI is not independently listed on public markets; it is part of third-party hosts on the DEPLOY registry.

### How can I invest in Vast AI?

Vast AI has no separately traded stock; it is owned by third-party hosts (the parent is the entity that trades, where it is public).

### Where is Vast AI headquartered?

Vast AI is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA.

### Who owns Vast AI?

Vast AI is owned by third-party hosts, per the DEPLOY registry.

### Is Vast AI a top robotics company?

On DEPLOY's intelligence score, which blends verified deployments, funding, hiring, media, safety, and IP signals, Vast AI ranks in roughly the top 98% of companies tracked by the registry.

### When was Vast AI founded?

Vast AI was founded in 2016.


## Sources (4)

1. https://vast.ai/about
2. https://vast.ai/
3. https://vast.ai/pricing
4. https://docs.vast.ai

## The verified answers

- [Which companies have the most robots deployed](/which-companies-have-the-most-robots-deployed.md)
- [Which operators run the most robots](/which-operators-run-the-most-robots.md)
- [Which robot operators cover the most countries](/which-robot-operators-cover-the-most-countries.md)

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