Polars, an Amsterdam-based company known for its open-source data processing tool, has raised $21 million in a Series A round led by Accel, with participation from Bain Capital Partners. The funding will support the development of Polars Distributed, a distributed engine aimed at handling petabyte-scale datasets and challenging Apache Spark.
Founded by Ritchie Vink as a pet project during Covid, Polars gained popularity for its ability to process data faster than Pandas. The company launched Polars Cloud, a managed data platform, in February and aims to bridge the gap between Pandas and Spark with its products.
Accel partner Zhenya Loginov highlighted Polars' success in addressing a significant problem in data processing. Polars is currently used in finance, life sciences, and logistics, with Polars Cloud and Polars Distributed marking a new phase for the company.