Amsterdam-based data infrastructure and analytics platform Polars has raised €18 million in a Series A round led by Accel, a global VC firm, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) and angel investors.
- Launched in 2020 by Ritchie Vink and Chiel Peters, Polars is a Rust-based data processing library that uses the Apache Arrow columnar format for fast, parallel computation.
- It provides APIs for Python, Rust, R, and Node.js and can read, write, and transform data from CSV, JSON, Parquet, databases, and cloud storage. Supporting both in-memory and streaming processing, Polars handles datasets larger than available memory efficiently.
- Adopted by companies like Netflix, Microsoft, and G-Research, it remains open-source while offering managed solutions such as Polars Cloud for seamless distributed and large-scale data processing.
- In 2023, it secured $4 million in seed funding from Bain Capital Ventures to further develop cloud-based capabilities.
Details of the deal
- Polars will use the €18 million Series A funding to enhance its data processing platform, focusing on fully streaming single-node performance, developing a distributed engine that scales seamlessly from local to cloud environments, and expanding Polars Cloud with managed infrastructure, autoscaling, and advanced query tools, while continuing to strengthen the open-source engine.
"We believe Polars represents a new standard in data processing. Its speed and usability have already set it apart from legacy frameworks, and its ability to challenge entrenched incumbents shows just how strong the opportunity is. Ritchie has shown remarkable technical vision and commitment to execution, and together with Chiel, he is now building a company capable of redefining how data is processed at scale,'' explains Accel's team in a press release.
