One of the first technological startups in Serbia, Vast – or its current incarnation, the American company Vast Holdings, was bought by Vroom, an online platform for used car trading. The acquisition was valued at $120 million.
Vast was founded in 2001 in Serbia, and since its beginnings, it specialized in developing products based on Big Data technology. Vroom has acquired Vast Holdings due to its CarStory product, which uses artificial intelligence to provide the necessary information to buyers and sellers of cars. CarStory has more than 18 million visits per month, and used cars represent a large market in the United States.
The first prototype of a vertical search engine was developed by a group of engineers from Belgrade in 2000. The idea caught the Silicon Valley investment fund’s attention, so in 2005 the first round of financing was raised and Vast.com, Inc. was established with headquarters in San Francisco and a development center in Belgrade. Today, Vast is a global company with over 160 employees.
Although Vast has long been an American company with a center for research and development in Belgrade, it played an important role in leading off the Serbian startup ecosystem, as many alumni of the company went on to found their own startups. In addition, it also connected Serbia with extremely high-profile global players such as Naval Ravikant, who is one of the co-founders of Vast.
