Our Investment in Polar: The Future of Global Payments for AI-Native Developers

The explosion of AI-driven development is reshaping not just how software is created, but also how it’s sold globally. Developers today, particularly those building AI-native products, face a unique set of challenges: scaling quickly, monetizing globally, and navigating complex international tax and compliance landscapes. Yet, traditional payment solutions and legacy Merchant of Record (MoR) providers often fall short, unable to match the agility and specialized needs of this new breed of AI-native, developer-centric merchants.

Enter Polar, a modern MoR platform purpose-built for developers, founded by Birk Jernström. Birk is no stranger to the intersection of commerce, payments, and developer tooling. Before Polar, he co-founded Tictail, scaling it to more than 100,000 merchants globally before its eventual sale to Shopify. Post-acquisition, Birk spent three years building the Shop Core team, leading both the payments and Shop.app products globally into millions of merchants. Now, he’s applying these hard-earned insights to redefine global monetization for developers.

Polar provides developers with a seamless way to sell software and digital products internationally via just six lines of code, automatically handling global payments, tax compliance, and usage-based billing - all key requirements for the AI-native development process. Today, Polar supports thousands of developers who rely on Polar's elegant simplicity and robust features to power their products. Similar to other transformative platforms we've partnered with, such as Vercel for front-end and Supabase for back-end, Polar is uniquely positioned to become the foundational payments infrastructure for AI-native software companies. With an API-first approach, transparent pricing, and deep community resonance, Polar isn’t just another MoR provider – it's building a brand and a movement around empowering developer success on a global scale.

Today, we're thrilled to announce our investment in Polar, leading the company’s $10M seed round. We're proud to be joined by strategic angels, including Steven Tey (Dub), Jorn van Dijk and Koen Bok (Framer), Anton Osika (Lovable), Sébastien and Alexandre Chopin (Nuxt), Thomas Paul Mann (Raycast), Zeno Rocha (Resend), Tobi Lütke and Harley Finkelstein (Shopify), Paul Copplestone (Supabase), Guillermo Rauch and Jared Palmer (Vercel), and Michael Grinich (WorkOS), who bring valuable experience and insights to the journey. Birk has already established a standout brand among independent developers and AI-first companies, driven by organic community growth, developer advocacy, and strategic partnerships. Polar is just getting started, and we can't wait to see what comes next.

Congratulations, Birk and Polar team, and welcome to the Accel family!