What is Linear?
Linear helps teams build and scale product development and issue tracking products.
- Category
- Product development and issue tracking
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, CA
- Founded
- 2019
- Employees
- 100-200 estimated
- Total funding
- $52M+ disclosed equity
- Valuation
- Not publicly disclosed
What is Linear?
Linear is a product development and issue tracking company founded in 2019 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Linear builds product development and issue tracking infrastructure for teams that need production software, AI, or data workflows rather than one-off prototypes. Revenue is not disclosed; Linear says it is trusted by more than 33,000 companies. Its public scale signal is 33,000+ companies disclosed on pricing page.
The company sits in a fast-moving market where buyers care about reliability, security, integration depth, and procurement maturity. Fast product-management system for software teams. Its position is strongest when customers need a managed platform that shortens engineering time while still fitting into existing cloud, data, and developer workflows.
For sellers, Linear is best treated as a scaled technical buyer. Engineering and product leaders influence architecture, finance and operations shape budget, and security or procurement becomes more important as contract size grows.
Sources:Linear websiteLinear pricing
What does Linear offer?
Linear's product set centers on Issues, Projects, Cycles.
- Issues· Core product
- Projects· Core product
- Cycles· Core product
- Roadmaps and initiatives· Expansion product
- Linear Asks· Expansion product
- Linear Agent· Expansion product
Sources:Linear websiteLinear pricing
How does Linear make money?
Linear makes money through usage, subscription, committed-capacity, and enterprise contracts depending on customer scale.
Free is $0 for unlimited members with limits such as 2 teams and 250 issues. Basic is $10/user/month billed yearly, Business is $16/user/month billed yearly, and Enterprise is custom with invoice/PO billing, SAML and SCIM, granular controls, priority support, account management, and stronger security.
Growth is driven by land-and-expand adoption: individual developers or small teams start with self-serve usage, then production workloads create larger commitments, security requirements, support needs, and procurement events. Enterprise customers typically pay for higher limits, private deployment patterns, governance, support, SLAs, and negotiated usage economics.
The unit economics depend on the underlying product category. Software-heavy products expand through seats and usage, while AI infrastructure and GPU-cloud businesses require disciplined capacity planning, reserved commitments, power and data-center execution, and high utilization of expensive compute assets.
Sources:Linear websiteLinear pricing
Who leads Linear?
Linear is led by Karri Saarinen, with technical, product, and go-to-market ownership spread across the leadership team.
- Karri SaarinenCo-founder & CEOCo-founder since 2019Former Airbnb designer; leads company and product direction.
- Jori LalloCo-founderCo-founder since 2019Engineering/product co-founder focused on the core system.
- Tuomas ArtmanCo-founderCo-founder since 2019Engineering co-founder and system architecture leader.
- Linear product leadershipProduct leadersScale-up phaseOwns AI agent, Asks, Insights, and enterprise workflow expansion.
How do you contact Linear's leadership?
Use published company channels first. The personal addresses below are format-following examples using linear.app; they should be verified before outreach and are not presented as confirmed personal inboxes.
first@linear.app (format-following example, not a verified personal mailbox)How much funding has Linear raised?
Linear has $52M+ disclosed equity; its latest disclosed valuation/status is Not publicly disclosed.
Linear's disclosed financing history is concentrated in these major events: 2019 Seed - about $4.2M; 2020 Series A - about $13M; Nov 2022 Series B - $35M. The latest disclosed valuation or market status is Not publicly disclosed.
2019: Seed - about $4.2M. Early round led by Sequoia Capital backs the Linear founders. 2020: Series A - about $13M. Sequoia-led round helps Linear scale beyond early adopters. Nov 2022: Series B - $35M. Accel-led round, with Sequoia and others participating, funds the system of record for product teams.
The funding signal matters because it defines buying capacity and operating pressure. Late-stage capital usually means new hiring, platform expansion, security upgrades, finance-process maturity, and larger procurement reviews; earlier-stage profiles require tighter ROI and founder-led evaluation.
How did Linear get here?
Linear's path runs from founding in 2019 through product expansion and its latest financing or public-market milestone.
- 2019Company foundedKarri Saarinen, Jori Lallo, and Tuomas Artman start Linear.
- 2020Public launch and Series ALinear builds traction with product and engineering teams.
- Nov 2022Series B raisedLinear raises $35M to become the system of record for product teams.
- 2023-2024Enterprise features expandThe platform adds roadmaps, customer requests, analytics, and deeper integrations.
- 2025AI and agent workflowsLinear introduces Linear Agent and related automation features.
- 202633,000+ companies disclosedLinear pricing page reports adoption by more than 33,000 companies.
Sources:Linear websiteLinear pricing
Who are Linear's competitors?
Linear competes with category specialists, open-source alternatives, and larger platform vendors.
- JiraBroad enterprise issue-tracking platform with deep admin and marketplace features.
- AsanaWork-management platform used across product and business teams.
- ShortcutSoftware planning and issue-tracking tool for engineering teams.
- HeightAI-native project-management tool for product teams.
- PlaneOpen-source project-management and issue-tracking alternative.
Sources:Linear websiteLinear pricing
Linear — frequently asked questions
