Linear Orbit, Inc.
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry |
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| Founded | 2019 |
| Key people | |
Linear Orbit, Inc. is an American software company based in San Francisco, California that develops the project management software Linear. It was founded in 2019 by Jori Lallo, Karri Saarinen, and Tuoman Artman.[1]
As of August 2026, it had over $100 million in annual recurring revenue and a valuation of $2.5 billion. Its customers include OpenAI, Salesforce, and Cursor.[1]
History
[edit]Linear was incorporated on January 10, 2019 by Jori Lallo, Karri Saarinen, and Tuoman Artman[2] to build an alternative to the Jira software which they found frustrating and poorly designed; at Airbnb, Saarinen had created his own Chrome Extension to improve his experience using Jira. By April 2019, Saarinen announced they were accepting customers for the waitlist to use Linear.[3] Before the end of the year, they closed $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital.[4]
Linear became cash-flow positive in 2021.[1][2]
On January 2022, Saarinen stated that Linear had 17 employees and over 1000 startups as customers.[2]
Linear attained $82 million in Series C funding in June 2025. At this point, they had 80 employees.[5]
In August 2026, employees sold $99 million of their equity in a tender offer led by Accel, valuing the company at $2.5 billion.[6] By this time, Linear had over 40,000 customers including OpenAI, Salesforce, Cursor, Coinbase, and Ramp.[1]
Corporate Affairs
[edit]Linear is a remote-first company.[5]
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 Bergman, Ben. "Everyone says SaaS is dead. Startup Linear just doubled its valuation". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2026-08-26. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- 1 2 3 "Karri Saarinen (@karrisaarinen) on X". X (formerly Twitter). 2022-01-10. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- ↑ Saarinen, Karri (2019-04-28). "Starting Linear". Archived from the original on 2021-04-14. Retrieved 2026-09-06.
- ↑ Constine, Ingrid Lunden, Josh (2019-11-21). "Linear takes $4.2M led by Sequoia to build a better bug tracker and more". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2025-07-22. Retrieved 2026-09-06.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - 1 2 Tong, Anna (2025-06-10). "Atlassian competitor Linear raises funding at $1.25-billion valuation".
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ "Sharing Linear's growth with the people building it". linear.app. 2026-08-26. Archived from the original on 2026-08-26. Retrieved 2026-09-05.