Ollama, an open source AI tool, secures $65 million funding and reaches 8.9 million users

Jul 9, 2026

AI Summary

Ollama has raised $65 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total funding to $88 million. The tool, which allows developers to run open-weight AI models on their PCs, has gained significant traction, now serving nearly 9 million users monthly, including 85% of Fortune 500 companies.

Ollama, an open source AI developer tool, raised $65 million in Series B funding led by Theory Venture.
The company has now raised a total of $88 million, following a $15 million Series A round led by Benchmark.
Launched in 2023, Ollama enables developers to quickly run open-weight AI models on personal computers, receiving positive feedback across various platforms.
The tool has achieved 176,000 stars and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub, indicating strong community engagement.
Ollama offers subscription tiers for accessing larger models, with pricing ranging from free to $100 per month, and tracks usage based on GPU time.
Founders Jeff Morgan and Michael Chiang previously worked on Docker Desktop, which simplifies cloud application deployment.
Ollama is reportedly used by over 8.9 million developers monthly and is present in 85% of Fortune 500 companies, despite having only 14 employees.
Benchmark’s Peter Fenton, who led the Series A round, emphasizes the rarity of creating a product that achieves widespread adoption among developers.
The startup's growth has been linked to the rising popularity of open models for coding tasks, particularly following the success of OpenClaw.
There is a growing trend among enterprises to adopt open models for cost efficiency, which may benefit Ollama's cloud business.
Some users have expressed concerns about the company's focus on monetization potentially detracting from its free offerings, a phenomenon referred to as “Enshittification.”
Morgan defends the cloud service as an evolution of its mission to assist programmers in utilizing large models that may be impractical to run locally.

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Ollama, an open source AI tool, secures $65 million funding and reaches 8.9 million users

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