Amsterdam-based Polars builds a Rust-written data query engine that has become a popular open-source alternative to Pandas, boasting more than 24 million downloads. Initially created by Ritchie Vink during Covid, the project evolved into a company that now sells complementary commercial products. In February, Polars launched Polars Cloud, a managed service that lets users run Polars queries at scale. It is also beta-testing Polars Distributed, a distributed engine designed to handle petabyte-scale datasets and compete with Apache Spark. These products target enterprise users across finance, life sciences, and logistics who need faster data processing on larger workloads. The company’s business model centers on monetizing these managed and distributed offerings while continuing to nurture its open-source community. To date, Polars has attracted €18 million in Series A funding and previously raised a $4 million seed round.

Total raised

$25M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Sep 2025