# Paper raises $34M Series A after 25x ARR growth in a month

By Steven Van · 2026-07-23

Accel and ICONIQ led the round for the HTML/CSS design tool now used by Ramp, Lovable, and Vercel.

Paper has closed a **$34M Series A** led by **Accel** and **ICONIQ Capital**, bringing the company's total funding to $38.5M. Founder Stephen Haney framed Paper as the pro design tool for teams shipping with agents, and said the company is well-funded and growing faster every day.

[Source post](https://x.com/i/status/2080322390878486903)

## 25x ARR growth in a month

The round follows a steep growth curve. According to Paper's own [announcement](<https://paper.design/blog/series-a>), ARR grew 25x in the month after the Paper Desktop launch, and the company has ranked near the top of Ramp's fastest-growing companies list for four consecutive months, including multiple #1 spots. Thousands of teams are now paying customers, among them Ramp, Lovable, Vercel, PostHog, and Quartr.

## Betting on HTML and CSS as the agent-native format

What separates Paper from a typical design tool is its rendering engine: designs are built directly in HTML and CSS instead of a proprietary format. That choice matters more now that AI coding agents are part of the workflow, since an agent editing a Paper design is generating markup it already understands natively, not translating between a design tool's internal format and code. Paper connects to coding agents through MCP, so a design and a running codebase can stay in sync without a manual handoff between designer and engineer.

## Who's backing it, and who's using it

Alongside Accel and ICONIQ, the round included Designer Fund, WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich, Lovable CEO Anton Osika, engineers and designers from Anthropic and OpenAI, and returning backers including Basecase, David Hoang, and Guillermo Rauch. Rauch, who has backed and built developer tools for years, said he's "seen very few tools in my career get the kind of love and organic adoption by industry leaders like Paper has had." Ramp's Diego Zaks put it in practical terms: Paper's agent integration lets designers spend more energy on the craft.

## Why this round matters

Design tools rarely see this kind of growth spike outside of a genuine workflow shift, and the shift here is agentic development becoming a normal part of how software teams ship. Paper is staking its Series A on the bet that design tooling built specifically around agents, rather than agents bolted onto legacy tools, wins that transition. The company's next moves will likely center on deepening the MCP integration and Paper Desktop, the product that triggered the growth spike in the first place.

![Paper](<https://creatorstoolbox.com/images/paper-logo.svg>)

Paper

Modern design tool for creating, sharing, and shipping. A fast, collaborative alternative to traditional design editors.

[View Paper →](<https://creatorstoolbox.com/tools/paper-design>)

Sources: [Paper Blog: Series A](<https://paper.design/blog/series-a>), [Stephen Haney on X](<https://x.com/stephenhaney/status/2080322390878486903>).

[Original source](<https://paper.design/blog/series-a>)

[Read Paper raises $34M Series A after 25x ARR growth in a month on Creators Toolbox](<https://creatorstoolbox.com/blog/paper-34m-series-a>)

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