Pathway reaches $500 million valuation with new AI architecture

AI startup Pathway has reached a $500 million valuation following a successful seed funding round that brings its total capital raised to $30 million. Led by CEO Zuzanna Stamirowska, the Palo Alto-based company is developing a new AI architecture called BDH (Baby Dragon Hatchling), which is positioned as a post-transformer alternative.

Unlike traditional transformer models, the BDH architecture aims to integrate memory, adaptation, and reasoning into a single model rather than treating memory as a separate mechanism. The company reports that its first public model achieved results on the ARC-AGI-1 benchmark comparable to GPT-5, but at approximately 11 times lower computational cost.

The new funding will be used to increase computing power, including the acquisition of systems featuring Nvidia GB300 chips, and to further develop larger models based on the BDH architecture. Pathway’s leadership team includes CTO Jan Chorowski, a former Google Brain researcher, and CSO Adrian Kosowski, a quantum physicist. The company has also expanded its team with Adam Kurzrok, formerly a Group Product Manager for Gemini at Google DeepMind.