SAN FRANCISCO, June 10 (Reuters) - Enterprise software

maker Linear has raised an $82 million Series C funding round

valuing the startup at $1.25 billion, the company said on

Tuesday.

Venture capital fund Accel led the round, with participation

from existing investors 01A and Sequoia, and new investors Seven

Seven Six and Designer Fund.

Linear, a maker of software development and project planning

tools, competes with Atlassian's ( TEAM ) project management

tool Jira. Linear said its profits grew 280% last year, and it

now has over 15,000 customers, including buzzy AI companies

OpenAI, Scale AI and Perplexity.

The 80-person, remote-first company will use its funding to

build more products and attract larger enterprises to its

customer base, said CEO Karri Saarinen.

Linear focuses on specific product development use cases, a

contrast to other tools that offer extensive customization but

often overwhelm users, Saarinen said.

For example, the company has specific functionalities around

common software development workflows, such as a built-in

"triage inbox" for software bugs and feature requests, and

management for software development cycles, called sprints. It

also has functionality for managing an AI like a team member,

enabling humans and AIs to build software together effectively,

something that is becoming common, Saarinen said.

The company's commitment to customer-first product

development over a technology-first approach is a focus that has

been overlooked in the AI era, Linear investor Miles Clements, a

partner at Accel, said.

"There are a lot of vendors that are pushing a lot of

unwanted AI slop into the market, and the Linear team instead is

clued into what users are looking for and then providing them

something they want," he said.