When Karri Saarinen co-founded Linear along with Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman, he was reacting to something he had seen repeatedly at companies like Airbnb and Coinbase, engineers and product teams losing enthusiasm the moment they opened up their project management software. Legacy tools, particularly Atlassian’s Jira, had become synonymous with complexity, bloat, and a loss of momentum.
That experience became the starting point for Linear, a fast, focused, and design-forward issue tracking and product development platform that aimed to remove friction from software creation. Six years later, that thesis has gained strong validation. The company has raised an $82 million Series C round led by Accel, with participation from Sequoia Capital, 01A, Seven Seven Six, and Designer Fund. The funding values the company at $1.25 billion.
Linear plans to use the funds to build more products and expand its presence within the enterprise. CEO Saarinen says the team is focused on scaling responsibly while preserving its commitment to simplicity and performance. With only 80 employees and a remote-first setup, Linear has operated profitably since 2021 and boasts a “negative lifetime burn rate” holding more cash than it has raised.
