On February 25, 2026, during the VAST Forward 2026 event in Salt Lake City, VAST Data unveiled two significant computing services: the VAST Data PolicyEngine and the VAST Data TuningEngine. These new offerings aim to enhance the VAST AI Operating System, enabling organizations to scale their AI initiatives effectively.
The PolicyEngine focuses on managing agentic activity and enforcing data access policies, addressing security concerns in AI workflows. This inline mechanism ensures that permissions are meticulously verified before actions are executed, fostering a zero-trust environment. Complementing this, the TuningEngine captures feedback from agentic workflows to continuously improve model performance through methods such as LoRA fine-tuning and reinforcement learning.
According to co-founder Jeff Denworth, these innovations transform the AI Operating System into a "thinking machine," capable of learning from interactions across various deployment environments. This development aligns with VAST Data's goal of creating an evolved AI system that autonomously adapts based on real-world data interactions since its establishment in 2016.