Linear
Company History
Linear History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2019 in San Francisco, California
When was Linear founded?
Linear was founded in 2019 in San Francisco, California by Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman, making it 7 years old.
- Founded
- 2019
- Founding place
- San Francisco, California
- Founders
- Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman
- Headquarters today
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Milestones documented
- 7 (2019–2026)
- Current CEO
- Karri Saarinen
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2019 | Linear Orbit, Inc. is incorporated on January 10 by Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo and Tuomas |
| 2019 | $4.2 Million Seed Round |
| 2020 | Public Launch and Series A |
| 2021 | Cash-Flow Positive |
| 2023 | $35 Million Series B |
| 2025 | Raises an $82 million Series C led by Accel at a $1.25 billion valuation, with about 80 |
| 2026 | Passes $100 million in ARR and 40,000 paying companies; completes a $99 million tender |
- Where was Linear founded?
- Linear was founded in San Francisco, California in 2019.
- Who founded Linear?
- Linear was founded by Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman.
- When did Linear start?
- Linear was founded in 2019.
- How old is Linear?
- Linear is 7 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
Karri Saarinen, a designer who had worked at Airbnb and Coinbase, was frustrated with Jira; at Airbnb he even built a Chrome extension to make it more bearable. He teamed up with Jori Lallo, his earlier co-founder at Kippt and a Coinbase engineer, and Tuomas Artman, an engineer at Uber. They incorporated Linear on January 10, 2019, opened a waitlist in April 2019 and raised a $4.2 million round led by Sequoia that November.
Founders
Karri Saarinen
Karri Saarinen co-founded Linear in 2019. Frustrated by the incredibly slow, bloated nature of Jira while working at massive tech unicorns, he realized developers despised the tools they were forced to use. As CEO, he obsessively focused on building a deeply aesthetic, lightning-fast issue tracker that developers would actually love using, effectively treating B2B software with consumer-grade design standards. Karri Saarinen was born in 1983.
Jori Lallo
Jori Lallo co-founded Linear in 2019 alongside his former Coinbase colleague Karri Saarinen. He played an absolutely critical role in engineering the highly complex sync engine that allows Linear to operate incredibly fast offline and instantly sync changes across all users globally without lag. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Tuomas Artman
Tuomas Artman co-founded Linear in 2019. Drawing on his massive experience optimizing the mobile architecture at Uber, he architected Linear's incredibly fast, C++ based sync engine. He specifically ensured the application felt instantaneous by aggressively pre-loading data locally on the user's machine, completely bypassing the massive loading times of legacy web apps. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Linear Orbit, Inc. is incorporated on January 10 by Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo and Tuomas
Linear Orbit, Inc. is incorporated on January 10 by Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman; a waitlist opens in April.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgPublic Launch and Series A
Opens publicly after its beta and raises a Series A led by Sequoia.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$35 Million Series B
Raises a $35 million Series B led by Accel at a valuation of about $400 million.
Source: forbes.comRaises an $82 million Series C led by Accel at a $1.25 billion valuation, with about 80
Raises an $82 million Series C led by Accel at a $1.25 billion valuation, with about 80 employees and more than 15,000 customers; launches its agent platform.
Source: techcrunch.comPasses $100 million in ARR and 40,000 paying companies; completes a $99 million tender
Passes $100 million in ARR and 40,000 paying companies; completes a $99 million tender offer at a $2.5 billion valuation.
Source: linear.appKeep researching Linear
Linear Company History FAQ
What are the major milestones in Linear's history?
Incorporation in January 2019, a $4.2M Sequoia-led round in 2019, a Sequoia-led Series A in 2020, cash-flow positive in 2021, a $35M Accel-led Series B in 2023, an $82M Series C at $1.25B in 2025, and $100M+ ARR with a $2.5B tender offer in 2026.
How did Linear become the project management tool of choice for AI pioneer OpenAI?
As OpenAI scaled development of ChatGPT and GPT-4, its engineering and research teams adopted Linear across the enterprise, praising its lightning-fast speed, keyboard shortcuts, and Git integration for managing complex AI development pipelines.
When did Linear introduce 'Linear Insights' for engineering analytics?
In 2022, Linear introduced Linear Insights, providing engineering managers with real-time velocity analytics, cycle completion trends, project lead times, and workload distribution charts without requiring manual tracking spreadsheets.
What was the significance of Linear's 2023 Series B?
In September 2023 Linear raised $35 million led by Accel at a valuation of about $400 million, according to Forbes. Customers such as the CEOs of Vercel, Supercell and Mercury also invested.
How did Linear expand beyond software engineering into cross-functional teams?
Between 2022 and 2024, Linear introduced features tailored for design, product management, and operations teams, such as Figma live embed previews, Linear Asks for internal workplace requests, and public customer feedback portals.
How did Linear pioneer the modern local-first software movement?
Linear became the flagship poster child for the 'Local-First' software engineering movement in Silicon Valley, proving that storing data client-side in browser SQLite databases delivers leading speed and superior user experience over traditional server-rendered apps.
How does Linear maintain weekly release changelogs for its users?
Every single week since 2019, Linear publishes a meticulously designed 'Linear Changelog', detailing new features, performance speedups, micro-animations, and bug fixes, building large transparency and loyalty with its developer community.
What is Linear's ultimate mission for the global software industry?
Linear's mission is to streamline software product creation, empowering high-performing teams to focus on building great products by removing bureaucratic friction and delivering tools that operate at the speed of thought.
How did Linear start?
Linear was founded in 2019 in San Francisco by Karri Saarinen (former Principal Designer at Airbnb), Tuomas Artman, and Jori Lallo. They started the company out of massive, shared frustration. They realized that standard issue-tracking software (like Jira) had become incredibly slow, bloated, and miserable to use. They built Linear to be ridiculously fast, entirely keyboard-driven, and highly aesthetic.
Related Strategic History
Compare founding milestones and corporate evolution
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