Why Georgian Invested in Clerk

We’re pleased to announce Georgian’s participation in Clerk’s $50 million Series C funding round alongside Menlo Ventures, Anthropic’s Anthology Fund, and existing investors. Founded in 2019 by brothers Colin and Braden Sidoti, Clerk is an authentication and user management platform that acts as the front door to more than 15,000 modern applications, serving over 200 million collective users. Clerk intends to utilize the capital raised in the Series C to double down on developer experience and system reliability while continuing to expand its product surface area to business primitives beyond authentication, user management, B2B SaaS tooling and billing (launched earlier this year at Stripe Sessions).

The Age of the Builder 

We believe that we’re entering an era of profound software innovation as a result of advances in AI, where the marginal cost of software production will continue to decline, leading to a dramatic increase in new applications being built. Today’s builders require ‘shovels’ that allow them to ship production-ready products with high velocity and reliability. One non-negotiable ‘shovel’ is authentication—the code that enables users to sign up and login. Seamless authentication establishes a positive first impression and helps drive user acquisition and retention. Yet, building authentication from scratch is a time-consuming, error-prone process that can lead to significant security issues down the road if not properly configured. Clerk’s component-first approach can free up developers to focus on building core product features by providing a reliable authentication and user management solution that’s easy to configure. 

Agent Experience (‘AX’)

With the proliferation of agentic AI, and as agents become active participants in software ecosystems, we expect developers of modern software to devote focus to building for agent experience (‘AX’). We believe that authentication will be foundational to AX – defining how developers maintain control, enforce security, and uphold governance as agents act on behalf of humans. In our opinion, developers will need to design systems that balance autonomy with oversight, giving agents the right controls, transparent permissions, and clear auditability.

Enter Clerk

Our journey with Clerk first began as users of the product. We were drawn to Clerk’s <SignUp/> and <SignIn/> components and the emphasis on creating a delightful developer experience. We believe that Clerk is well positioned to benefit from a structural shift in how developers are designing modern applications with its pre-built, customizable UI components that handle both frontend and backend logic. We’re excited about the role Clerk will play in AX as the standards for secure agents are defined. 

Authentication and user management are part of the foundation of modern software. Discover how Clerk is building the tools to make it simple, secure, and scalable at clerk.com. Welcome to the Georgian family Colin, Braden, and the entire team at Clerk!