The Startup Behind Open Source Tool Polars Raises $21M From Accel
Polars, the Amsterdam-based startup, has made headlines as the startup behind open source tool Polars raises $21M from Accel. The Series A funding, led by Accel with participation from Bain Capital Partners and angel investors, marks a big step for the company as it pushes deeper into the data infrastructure market.
What began as a side project during the COVID lockdown is now one of the fastest-growing data science tools. Founder Ritchie Vink, frustrated with the performance limits of Pandas, built Polars in Rust to deliver blazing-fast query capabilities. Just five years later, Polars has become a favorite among developers and enterprises managing massive datasets.
From Pet Project To Global Data Tool
Vink never set out to build a VC-backed company. Polars was simply his solution to Pandas’ limitations. But the tool’s speed and efficiency quickly gained traction in the open-source community.
That momentum eventually led to the formation of a company, co-founded with former Xomnia CTO Chiel Peters. Two years later, Polars is no longer just an open-source library—it’s evolving into a business with real products.
Why Accel Backed Polars
According to Accel partner Zhenya Loginov, performance alone isn’t enough for long-term success. What impressed investors was Polars’ clear roadmap for becoming a scalable data platform.
Polars recently launched Polars Cloud, a managed service that lets teams run queries at scale without managing infrastructure. This step positions the startup as a serious player in the enterprise data market.
Building Beyond Open Source
With its fresh $21M, Polars is doubling down on enterprise-grade features. The main focus will be Polars Distributed, a new distributed engine designed to handle petabyte-scale workloads. Currently in public beta, this tool could put Polars in direct competition with Apache Spark, a giant in the data processing world.
For Vink and Peters, the mission is clear: turn Polars from a fast open-source library into a full-stack platform for modern data science.
The rise of Polars reflects a broader trend: open-source projects evolving into venture-backed businesses. With this funding, the startup joins the ranks of companies like Databricks that began in open source and grew into enterprise leaders.
As the startup behind open source tool Polars raises $21M from Accel, all eyes are now on how it executes its next phase—scaling products while keeping the open-source community at its core.
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