The developers are already here. The traction is already real. Here are the companies building the future of enterprise software – in the open.
Every year at Oxx, we scan the open source horizon to answer a deceptively simple question:
Which OSS projects are showing the earliest signs of explosive momentum — even before they generate revenue, or sometimes, before they even formalise a business model?
In open source, traction looks different. It’s not ARR. It’s not ad spend. It’s commits, contributors, issues opened and closed, pull requests reviewed, and features shipped.
It’s community. That’s why we built our Product-Community Fit methodology – a signal that cuts through vanity metrics like GitHub stars or downloads, and looks instead at meaningful contributor engagement. Our research has shown that once a project crosses 50–100 active monthly contributors, it often enters a compounding growth phase: technical, communal, and eventually commercial.
Previous rising stars include companies like Cursor, Suno, Redpanda and Gravitee.
2025: A Shift From Output to Intelligence
This year’s Rising Stars reflect a new maturity in open source AI infrastructure. In 2023 and 2024, the conversation centred on what AI could generate: text, code, music. But in 2025, the most exciting OSS companies are focused on how to integrate AI intelligently, modularly, and reliably into software workflows.
Thematically, the 2025 cohort clusters around four emerging patterns:
- RAG-native platforms that make content grounding seamless
- Agentic frameworks that move from chatbots to autonomous dev tools
- LLMOps infrastructure optimised for developer experience
- Low-code environments enhanced by AI-native interfaces
Proven Signals, New Stars
Since launching this research in 2021, the companies we’ve spotlighted have gone on to raise over $3.6 billion in capital. This includes early leaders like Supabase, Redpanda, DuckDB and not least Cursor — many of whom showed their earliest signs of momentum via our engagement metrics, long before their Series As.
Since the last cohort reveal:
- Two companies from past cohorts were acquired
- Several crossed the $100M+ funding mark
- And more than $2 billion in follow-on capital has flowed to Rising Star alumni
Why This Matters
Open source is no longer an edge case. It’s the foundation of how the next generation of B2B software is being built – especially in AI, developer tools, and infrastructure. For investors, founders, and developers alike, the question isn’t if OSS will underpin future enterprise stacks. It’s which projects will lead the way.
These are the ones we believe are already doing just that.
Explore the full 2025 cohort → https://www.oxx.vc/rising-stars/rising-stars-2025/
