Pathfinder: What's New in June 2025

HPE Discover 2025

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June 6, 2025

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Contents:

  • What’s Next in AI-Ready Data: Inside HPE Discover 2025 with Hewlett Packard Pathfinder

  • OFC 2025 Recap: Pushing the Boundaries of Optical Innovation

  • RSAC 2025 Recap: From AI to OT Security – Pathfinder’s Top 5 Takeaways

  • Classiq Raises $110M in Largest-Ever Quantum Software Round

  • Portfolio Company News

Welcome to the June edition of Pathfinder Insights! As we head into HPE Discover 2025, anticipation is building around the transformative innovations shaping enterprise AI, networking, and hybrid cloud. This year’s event will spotlight the technologies—and startups—defining what's next.

BigID and WEKA will be featured in the Startup Innovators Pavilion, showcasing their leadership in data governance and high-performance infrastructure. Cohesity and Scality will be on the show floor with dedicated booths, highlighting their roles in securing and scaling enterprise data. These companies reflect Pathfinder’s mission to support visionary founders solving real enterprise challenges. Check out our article below for more details.

In this issue, we also recap highlights from OFC 2025 and RSA Conference 2025, from shifts in cybersecurity investment strategies to momentum in optical and quantum innovation. Plus, Classiq's recent funding milestone marks a breakthrough moment for quantum software startups and the broader ecosystem.

What’s Next in AI-Ready Data: Inside HPE Discover 2025 with Hewlett Packard Pathfinder

This year at HPE Discover 2025, Pathfinder portfolio companies BigID and WEKA will be among the featured sponsors in the Startup Innovators Pavilion—demonstrating the kind of breakthrough technologies HPE aims to amplify, from modernizing data governance and privacy to accelerating AI workloads with next-generation infrastructure.

BigID and WEKA are transforming how organizations manage and utilize data for AI success. BigID enables enterprises to operationalize data privacy, compliance, and security, ensuring data is trusted and governed. WEKA’s high-performance data platform is purpose-built for AI, solving critical challenges like data throughput and access speed—making it easier for enterprises to scale AI initiatives and maximize GPU utilization. Their innovations exemplify the dual pillars of AI readiness: trusted data and high-performance infrastructure.

See how BigID, Weka, and more are driving AI innovation at Discover—read the full blog here.

OFC 2025 Recap: Pushing the Boundaries of Optical Innovation

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) Conference, the world’s leading global event for optical networking and communications. With more than 600 exhibitors, 650 technical presentations, and 13,500+ attendees filling San Francisco’s Moscone Center from March 30th to April 3rd, the conference highlighted how the optical industry is evolving to meet the AI, datacenter, and next-generation connectivity demands of enterprise businesses.

Pathfinder’s Perspective

Pathfinder attended OFC 2025 to connect with the innovators shaping the future of optical infrastructure. From our conversations on the show floor to the packed technical sessions, it’s clear that optical I/O is rapidly moving from niche to necessity in AI and high-performance computing. We’re closely watching the broader wave of silicon photonics and quantum networking startups that are accelerating toward commercialization. OFC 2025 made one thing clear: the optical ecosystem is entering a new era of scale, speed, and strategic relevance.

Key Themes and Technology Highlights:

• AI and Quantum Integration: A major narrative throughout the event was how large language models and AI workloads are driving innovation across photonics and networking. Demonstrations included photonic AI accelerators and discussions on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD).

• Next-Gen Optical Components: The technical program spotlighted multi-core and hollow-core fibers, advanced modulators and detectors (especially those based on Thin Film Lithium Niobate), and expanded multi-band transmission techniques that could reshape long-haul and metro optical networks.

• Data Center Focus: A dedicated Data Center Summit explored how hyperscalers are adapting optical I/O to address the intense bandwidth and latency requirements of AI training clusters and cloud-native workloads.

Startup Momentum: Photonics Innovation on Display

This year’s OFC was especially notable for the flurry of activity from startups working on AI infrastructure, silicon photonics, and high-performance optical solutions:

• Ayar Labs, a Pathfinder Portfolio company, showcased an industry-first 4Tbps bi-directional WDM optical solution, using its TeraPHY optical I/O chiplets and SuperNova light source to achieve 2.048 Tbps per direction with < 10ns latency and < 10W power consumption.

• Quantum Source, a photonic quantum startup focused on quantum networking, announced a $50M Series A round to advance its engineering roadmap.

• Celestial AI, a photonic interconnect startup, unveiled a $175M Series C round to commercialize its Photonic Fabric, an optical interconnect technology designed to accelerate communication between AI processors and memory, delivering better bandwidth, lower latency, and very low (single-digit pJ/bit) power.

• Aloe Semi, an early-stage silicon photonics component startup, demonstrated single-lane optical transmission data rates of 850Gbps. Depending on the applications, interconnects typically run across 4, 8, 16, or 24 lanes—so scaling this performance linearly shows strong potential.

These announcements signal a wave of investor and customer confidence in optical I/O, co-packaged optics, and quantum communications—technologies that are rapidly transitioning from research labs to commercial readiness.

RSAC 2025 Recap: From AI to OT Security – Pathfinder’s Top 5 Takeaways

RSAC 2025 brought together 44,000 cybersecurity professionals in San Francisco. Hewlett Packard Pathfinder was among the attendees, engaging with startups, major incumbents, and investors across a wide range of conversations. Here are our top five takeaways:

• Protect AI Exits to PANW: Palo Alto Networks announced its $650M–$700M acquisition of Protect AI, validating the growing urgency around AI Security and confirming Pathfinder’s confidence in the team and the space.

• RSAC to Invest $50M in the Finalists: A bold new move from RSAC, each of the ten Innovation Sandbox finalists will now receive $5M via an uncapped SAFE. It’s a founder-friendly, YC-styled strategy, giving RSAC early access to breakout companies.

• ProjectDiscovery Wins Innovation Sandbox: This year’s winner offers open-source tools for attack surface monitoring and vulnerability management, which highlights a return to foundational problems after two years of AI-focused winners.

• Incumbents Debut Agentic AI for SOCs: CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and IBM unveiled agent-based AI tools to assist SOC analysts with triage, detection, and partial remediation, marking early but promising developments.

• Resurgence of OT Security: Operational Technology (OT) security vendors gained fresh attention. Startups and incumbents including Elisity, Zero Networks, and Cisco showcased next generation microsegmentation capabilities to protect lateral movement across critical infrastructure.

Read the full RSAC 2025 recap for a deeper look at the trends, takeaways, and technologies shaping the future of cybersecurity—from AI security to the resurgence of OT.

Classiq Raises $110M in Largest-Ever Quantum Software Round

Congratulations to our portfolio company Classiq on raising $110 million in the largest funding round to date for a quantum software company. This landmark achievement reflects growing global interest in quantum technologies and Classiq’s unique approach to simplifying quantum software development for enterprise use.

As an early backer, we’re thrilled to see Classiq reach this next stage of growth and continue leading the way in making quantum computing more accessible and scalable. The team’s progress is a testament to the strength of their vision—and we look forward to what comes next.

Discover how Classiq is shaping the next chapter of quantum computing—read the full press release here.

Portfolio Company News