Linear raises $82M Series C at $1.25B valuation with 15,000 customers and 280% profit growth

those based on the com on the industries that they are attempting to disrupt.

Uh there's a board of leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship from around the world along with newer a newer advisory board uh that ranked quantitative criteria by importance and ability to disrupt established industries and public companies.

This year the two advisory boards found that scalability and user growth were the most important criteria followed by sales growth and access to capital and community. It's very funny that uh Anderrol's number one because like what are their user growth metrics? Like that's not the metric for them at all.

like users are a relevant metro. They're not looking at like mows and dows. They're looking at like how many things did we build. Um but still so fruit coming in. I'm I'm still fixated on the fist because I guess going off of users, you know, they're selling a consumable good in in Whole Foods.

Um but uh tough tough go for, you know, companies like Scale AI which are down at at 20 28. Um, so fruit is better than 18. So, so yeah, if you were going off of this, you'd go short longest. It's possible this is should be Meta's next target. Maybe they should try to move up the list. Yes. And get them all.

They already have a deal with Ander. They have an amazing distribution engine. Yeah. Every other ad could just be an ad for berries or fruit. And I I eat these things all the time. And and it just be a good way to to really they could potentially turn Fruttus from the bear unicorn into a you know a deca unicorn.

I love it. A deck of corn. We need we we need more food. We need better food. This is a this is a common common theme. This makes a ton of sense. Um so new for 2025, we can compare the way the two different advisory boards considered the importance of the list criteria.

While the two boards mostly agreed, the VC group thought that the size of the industry being disrupted was more important than the academics did. with the latter ranking access to capital and community as more important criterion than the group that provides said access.

The ranking model is complex enough to be sensitive to these differences of opinion. And perhaps more than ever, it makes good on the concept that companies must score highly on a wide range of criteria to make the final list.

Nominated companies were also asked to submit it important qualitative information about themselves, including descriptions of their core business model, ideal customers, and recent company milestones. A team of CNBC editorial staff including TV anchors, reporters and producers and CNNBC.

com reporters and editors along with many members of the advisory board read the submissions and provided holistic qualitative assessments of each company. Uh in addition, the VC advisory board assessed a small group of finalists as an additional component of the qualitative review.

Specifically, we asked VC the VC group to assess some of the companies that would if selected be making the list for the first time as well as to help in the consideration of high-scoring early stage firms, a a group of lower value.

Part of the criteria, they didn't want the top 25 to all be enterprise SAS companies because that doesn't it's not good for ratings. It's not good for ratings. Not good for ratings.

So uh only 11 of the 2025 honor honores are pre-Chat GPT CNBC disruptors but most of that group and data bricks can and canva chief among them the uh the embrace of the new era is what has kept them here and so uh there were 19 first timers in either 2023 or 2024 companies are moving up they're moving down um but it's an exciting list.

Who else sticks out on this list? We got to get some of these folks on. A better ride to school from Zoom. Wabby, how self-driving trucks see and learn. That seems interesting. Appronic 5 feet 8 in 160 pounds all robot. Haven't seen them. Harvey's on the list. Lawyering up AI. They got good pathy pathy phrases.

Good lines. Notion project project management. Okay, we got project management for your projects. That's kind of an odd one, but not the strongest. A bridge. Getting a doctor's note. Isuu Isusu treating renters like owners. Shield AI the CEO on. Interesting. Uh well, very fun list. We love a good list.

We we're now that Conrad's out the Midas list has fallen from grace and we need new lists. But congrats to Ander. Congrats to Open and congrats to everyone that made the list of the CNBC disruptive 50. One thing's clear, you got to be an absolute dog to get on this list. Yes, you do.

Um, well, we have Ki uh from Linear coming in the studio. Get the gong ready, John. Why don't you hit it? I will hit it for him. We're gonna hit it a few times. Ki, uh, before you before you dive in, uh, yeah, give us the numbers first. How much did you raise? How much did you raise? 82 million.

Low dilution round at a billion. We love to see it. Um, uh, a lot of people would have said, you know, this was maybe an unlikely round. You guys have been very very efficient. Uh but it's a testament to to proving the haters wrong. They said it couldn't be done. Well, they said it could be done.

They said Ki would never would wouldn't do it. It's great to have you on. Um massive milestone for you and the team. How are you feeling? Yeah, feel feeling great.

And yeah, I think it's definitely like um one of this like I think like all of our rounds has been kind of like interesting because since I think the seed round we haven't really needed the money. So each round is kind of like we we're doing something different or or we signaling something to the market.

So it's a little bit always like strange to do these rounds because like I think like often like you celebrate it as a way to be able to do something more and I think like in the end we we'll do something more but also that like not a lot of changes like we we still keep building for the customers and um the things we're doing.

Talk about maybe some of the last rounds how they were unique and and what makes this round unique. Yeah. Um I think we also like done this like interesting thing where we have kind of doubled down on each of the investors.

So Seoia led our seat round um back in 2020 and then we did a series A with them I think 21 and then we did a series B with XL in 22 and then now two years later or like about 3 years year later we we did a series C with them.

So I think there there's also like um I remember when I was talking to back in the day like around the seed round to a lot of seed round investors and I think like they they had this like they create this fear that these platform funds can be challenging and like there can be this signaling risk and all kinds of things and I don't know if that's really true or I haven't I don't even know like when that has happened but I do know that it's kind of like interesting when you are working with this platform form funds, they can like double like kind of like lead two rounds in in in like kind of sequence.

And I think the benefit there is that you can kind of push down the delusion because there is um they already have some kind of ownership and they like I think like a lot of times the with this game of like fundraising like the the actual absolute numbers don't matter like how much you raise or what the valuation is.

It's more like everyone's just fighting for their percentages. And so if you if you kind of like work with the same investors, you have more like I don't know leverage or or there's a little more like flexibility on those percentages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it makes sense.

It also makes uh board construction easier because you're not adding 25 different board members from every fund. uh on the platform fund thing.

I mean, it's clear that like that narrative came out of like kind of the clubhouse era where the company got marked up multiple times for by the same insider and and the metrics didn't really meet that. Um was this more of a vibe round or an Excel round? How are the metrics tracking? What what are people?

What are people watching? Are they looking like is Mao Dow the key KPI? You don't have to give us the actual number, but like what is most important? Is it revenue, profit, EBIT do EBIT? like what what metrics are are are most important for a round like this to get done in this era?

Um I mean like I think like all the later stage funds like or later stage rounds it it is about the growth and and the revenue.

Um I mean obviously different companies are different so like there might be like other other things but but for us since we we sell to companies it it generally like turns into revenue like we don't have a lot of like free users or free free customers or um every everyone is like a a paid customer.

I think it's like comes down to one is like kind of like the growth and the the kind of position we have in the market.

we been able to capture quite a lot of the growth market these days like the early stage startup but also like the latest stage growth market like companies like ramp or mercury or brex or or um and even open AI which is I don't know like if you categorize it as a growth company or like enterprise or what is that I don't know company behemoth yeah we need a new word to corn something like that yeah yeah I think like we I think like it comes down to like we we work with the best companies out there.

Y and I think like we also have like a lot of um people really love the product and like they really want to use it. So I think like we have had a lot of opportunities that we could have additional investors join the board or like lead these rounds.

But for me at this point I think it's it's probably like in the next next like the next time around there's probably reasons to find someone new and like find someone with like some kind of specific or different skill set. But right now, I didn't feel like that's necessary right now.

I think like the biggest thing what we're aiming for is that like we have this core business and and product going with a lot of like 15,000 customers like companies. Um that I think that you love it.

Uh the next thing is the the the kind of like the AI and how how you probably heard it this like a million times on this on this show but I think again uh the AI is like shifting the the market and and like how things work and like how software is built and I think we often I like to do these rounds when we don't need to do it and we also like when we are about to hit something big and I think we were about to hit something big with this like yeah talk about some of the discussions around.

Yeah. Talk about some of the the discussions uh you know with Excel and and some of the other partners and internally with the team around this sort of inflection point with agents because for the first you know you guys have had a bunch of integrations for a long time but this is sort of a novel type of integration.

And I know you guys are working with um you know Devon and Cognition and and other players and um you know that that feels to me like a lot of the uh linear position as a platform that can help manage agents feels like you know a major catalyst. Yeah. Um yeah.

So some some of those companies we've been working now but and there's a lot more coming. I I don't have the exact dates yet, but I think we're also working with the bigger companies out there that are are building some of the like the like the model companies. Um so hopefully those are coming soon.

So yeah, I think like the with the agents the idea is that we have this we have built this like end to-end workflow for like discovering and planning and building products and it's like kind of familiar to this organizations and these product teams and I think like right now like we we started seeing this traction from our customer base and also talking to CTO's almost every CTO out there is thinking about AI like how do we we we I think like the CTO's and and CEOs are writing these memos and like they know that they can help their organizations but the the problem now is like there's a lot of friction like the the solutions are not that like designed yet like it it's a little bit hard to use some of these tools and or use this technology so the idea here is that like we have this familiar system that people already do use to to do their work and so we can easily introduce this agents and some of the other AI capabilities into it.

So they don't have to like go somewhere else to do it, but they can kind of like continue what they're doing. But now instead of assigning task or or like kind of like code bugs or something to humans or the teammate teammates, you can assign them to agents and then work with them to solve them.

So I think like the the the kind of like the idea there is that we want to make it as easy as possible for organizations to kind of adopt the AI or adopt these agents or adopt like the new technology.

Um because like a lot of the other companies are kind of like more building the underlying technology but then sometimes it's it seems like it's hard to for enterpris yeah orchestrate them. I want to let you get back to building but I have I want to get WWC reaction. We got to get your take on WWC.

I mean, Linear is a fantastic designdriven firm. I'm sure that there was a lot of internal chatter in the Slack or in the in the in the in the group chats about WWC. How's the reaction? Liquid Glass. Liquid Glass. What's the take? Give break it down for us.

Um, yeah, I don't want to go too harsh on it until I think I think until it's like in production. I do think like there's some discussion.

I think the the borders are too rounded and I think like some of the borders are off like they're not following the right like when you have like two rounded rectangles you should kind of like follow the same curve with those curve um with those round like the border radius.

Um so it looks like an kind of like an even like that there's even spacing alongside all of the all of the kind of path. Um, but I don't know if that was a mistake someone did for the keynote or they just didn't want to like I don't know they didn't do it correctly. Um, I hope it was a mistake.

Um, I think it's it seems like really I I think obviously visually interesting, but I I'm still like skeptical until like I see it like how well it's actually works in practice.

Like at linear actually we did have some of this we had this like trans transluent UI at some point and then I decided to remove it because I I thought it was like too distracting and it's actually was kind of slowing the application down.

So I I decided to remove it and and so I'm hoping that Apple can make it performant and also not distracted. Yeah. Do you think do you think there's always going to be readability challenges with it or is it something you know that uh that they can solve?

I mean I think the starting point it it it is hard to like solve that because like I think it's that was my experience with like having like transparent UI as well is that it it can work well if you have a nice like I don't know solid color background on your computer or or something.

But then like if you have like a photo like on the on the phone you have a photo of your family or something it it can be kind of bright and like there can be a lot of different things going on in the background. So I do think it it will be hard to like make it kind of easy like the contrast to be enough to to read it.

But I don't know if they're going to do some kind of magic there that they could figure out like what's on the background and then adjust it somehow. Um, so I'm hoping that they can figure it out, but um I'm I remain a little bit skeptical until like I actually see our batteries our batteries are going to be cooked.

I think they'll figure it out. Um, well, congratulations to to you and the whole team and uh yeah, excited to uh see what you guys continue to cook up. Yeah, this is fantastic. Getting started. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Thanks. Have a good one, Ky. Uh, let's check in with Tyler.

Apparently, he has iOS 26 installed. Give us the update, Tyler. How's it going? Let's see it. Yeah. So, I got it fully installed. I mean, we might have to put those uh those posts in the truth zone. It looks pretty good on my phone. It looks good. It's like pretty readable. Give us the review.

I think it's I I I like it. I might I mean, it's it's a bit slow on my phone. That might be because Which one do you have? I have an 11. So, it's like