From Shopify To Polar: Birk Jernström Raises $10M To Help Devs Build AI-Driven One-Person Unicorns, Backed By Startup Giants

Birk Jernström, the founder of Polar and former head of product at Shopify's SHOP Shop app, has raised a $10 million seed round to fuel a platform built for solo developers aiming to scale globally. Polar announced the round on Thursday, which was led by Accel and joined by prominent angels including Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein, and leaders from Vercel, Supabase, Raycast, Resend, and WorkOS, among others.

Polar launched publicly in September and now reports more than 17,000 users, 5,300 GitHub stars, and a Discord community of 1,500 active contributors. "There is a new generation of AI-native, early-stage businesses that want to grow without distractions," Accel partner Andrei Brasoveanu, who led the funding, told TechCrunch.

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Polar is Building the Monetization Layer for a New Class of Devs

Polar describes its platform as a complete monetization engine tailored to AI-era software startups, particularly those launched by solo developers, saying that it acts as the merchant of record, handling taxes, compliance, fraud, and global checkout infrastructure, allowing founders to focus on their product.

Polar is open-source and designed to be implemented with just four lines of code, appealing to developers seeking low-lift infrastructure solutions. According to the statement, Polar supports usage-based billing, automatic event ingestion from OpenAI and Vercel SDKs, and automates license management for SaaS entitlements.

TechCrunch says that the rise of AI-first tools has made it increasingly possible for solo developers to build and scale companies that once required full teams and large budgets. One-person startups, once seen as a rarity, are now emerging across the tech industry with serious momentum.

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Jernström told TechCrunch that Polar is a "monetization platform to empower one-person unicorns," offering infrastructure that supports billing, compliance, and global sales from day one.

Polar's monthly revenue growth reportedly exceeds 120%, fueled by rising demand from developers using platforms like Supabase and Vercel to build AI-first applications.

A Founder Obsessed With Customer Experience

Jernström is no stranger to product-led growth. He co-founded Tictail, a platform for indie merchants that was acquired by Shopify in 2018 for $17 million. TechCrunch says that he later helped lead the development of the Shop Pay ecosystem within Shopify, eventually stepping away in 2021 to start Polar.

"In 2011, we started Tictail with the mission of empowering anyone to start an online store. We launched in 2012 and it quickly took off," Jernström told TechCrunch. "In a couple of years, we were home to 100,000+ merchants on the platform, very much on the long tail." 

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His hands-on approach hasn't changed. "I answer more than 50 or 60 support tickets a day. I know every single customer that we work with," Jernström told the outlet.

According to Polar, the new funding will be used to expand the startup’s remote-first team across Europe, with new hires focused on developer relations, product engineering, and platform partnerships.

With strong early adoption and support from high-profile investors, Polar is targeting a future where billion-dollar businesses can be built by a single developer.

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