VAST Data has deepened its partnership with DigitalOcean.

DigitalOcean, a Neocloud-like cloud service provider, is deploying the VAST Data AI Operating System within its AI-native cloud.

DigitalOcean is a 14-year-old Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider that offers low-cost virtual machines and has expanded into AI infrastructure services for its customers, ranging from GPU hardware to agent development services. VAST Data provides disaggregated all-flash storage along with a substantial AI-focused software layer, the AI Operating System, which many Neoclouds have adopted.

The companies say AI agents need fast, governed access to context, but developers today must assemble that context from separate object stores, vector databases and data pipelines. Together, they are consolidating that stack into one integrated system for inference and agentic applications.

Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, said: "Agents are only as good as the context they can reach. They require an integrated environment where compute, data and security work together as one system. VAST and DigitalOcean are building that platform for agents. By combining DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud with the VAST AI OS, we're creating an optimized path without forcing developers to stitch together disconnected services. Together, we're giving models and agents the context they need in real time, with the simplicity and economics enterprises need to operate AI at scale."

DigitalOcean is a publicly traded American cloud service provider founded in 2012. It offers IaaS and says it focuses on making cloud hosting affordable and straightforward for developers, startups and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). It positions itself as a simpler alternative to larger providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). Its flagship service is Droplets, easy-to-spin-up Linux virtual private servers available in various sizes and regions, starting at low monthly prices (for example, around $4 to $6 per month for basic configurations). DigitalOcean is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, and operates 15 globally distributed data centers.

The company has pivoted from a traditional developer-focused cloud built around Droplets into an "AI-Native Cloud" aimed at inference and agentic workloads. A key step was its 2023 acquisition of Paperspace for $111 million in cash, which gave DigitalOcean GPU-powered infrastructure and AI/ML tooling. That helped it offer developers and SMBs easier ways to train, build and deploy AI models.

DigitalOcean now offers high-end GPU compute through GPU Droplets and bare-metal GPU servers. These include Nvidia hardware (H100, H200, B300, L40s and RTX series) and AMD hardware (Instinct MI300X, MI325X, MI350X and others). Options range from single-GPU to multi-GPU configurations, including 8x setups, along with spot, or interruptible, capacity for lower costs.

Its datacenters, such as the Richmond facility, are being upgraded with liquid cooling, high-speed non-blocking RDMA fabrics and capacity for dense GPU workloads. The company says that owning its own silicon, rather than renting capacity, improves unit economics at scale.

In effect, DigitalOcean has moved from basic cloud hosting into the Neocloud market, offering a full AI stack designed to make agent deployment and inference practical and affordable for its core customers.

Through the VAST partnership, DigitalOcean is delivering Agent Data Services (ADS), a fully managed data layer in which agents and AI applications read the context they need and write back what they learn, using the reliability and scale of the VAST AI OS. Every piece of a customer's data, from agent logs and traces to video, documents and images, becomes agent-ready the moment it arrives and can be searched by meaning in a single call.

ADS unifies storage, database and vector search in one system. Data is indexed and queryable as it lands, with no separate vector database or ETL pipeline to manage. According to VAST, all data lands in one tenant-isolated catalog, and built-in governance controls what each agent can read and write, so every agent operates only within the data it is permitted to access.

According to VAST, DigitalOcean cut boot times from 120 seconds to 15 seconds and reduced operational overhead by unifying storage and databases. The company also eliminated GPU idle time and reduced operational infrastructure overhead.

A YouTube video provides more detail.

Paddy Srinivasan, DigitalOcean CEO, said: "The inference and agentic era needs a cloud where every layer is built to work together. Expanding our partnership with VAST brings the VAST AI OS into the DigitalOcean AI-Native Cloud, so our customers get the performance and scale of a world-class data platform with the simplicity and scale they expect from DigitalOcean. Together, we're making it easier and more cost-effective for developers and businesses to run AI in production."