The Ollama AI tool has secured $65 million in Series B funding to expand its platform for running open-weight models locally on personal computers. According to a report by TechCrunch, the funding round was led by Theory Ventures, bringing the company’s total raised capital to $88 million. This follows a previous $15 million Series A round led by Benchmark.
The startup, which launched in 2023, helps developers set up and run open-weight models on their personal computers within minutes. The company currently operates with a team of 14 employees.
Funding Details and Investor Support
Theory Ventures led the latest $65 million Series B round. Peter Fenton of Benchmark, who led the earlier Series A round, remains on the company’s board of directors. Both the startup’s founders and investors declined to disclose the new valuation or revenue figures.
Fenton stated that the founders’ previous experience building Docker Desktop demonstrates their ability to create widely adopted developer products. He noted that the transition to open-weight models is becoming a vital project for companies looking to manage high inference expenses.
Growth Metrics of the Ollama AI Tool
The Ollama AI tool has grown to serve over 8.9 million developers every month. The platform’s open-source repository has accumulated 176,000 stars and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub.
Jeff Morgan, co-founder and CEO of Ollama, stated that the software is now used within 85% of Fortune 500 companies. The rapid adoption reflects a growing demand among programmers to run models locally rather than relying solely on cloud-based APIs.
Technical Features and Business Model
The platform allows developers to run models locally, but it also offers a neocloud service to host larger, more complex models. This cloud service features several subscription tiers ranging from a free option to $100 per month.
Unlike traditional API providers that charge based on token limits, this service tracks usage based on GPU time. This approach aligns with the company’s goal to simplify model discovery and execution for software engineers.
Background and Industry Context
Founders Jeff Morgan and Michael Chiang previously built Docker Desktop, joining Docker after the acquisition of their previous startup, Kitematic. Their experience in containerization has influenced how they structured the Ollama AI tool to abstract hardware configuration issues for developers.
The demand for local execution tools increased around January 2026, driven by the rise of agentic tasks like coding in open models such as OpenClaw. While some community members previously expressed concern that cloud services might distract from the free desktop project, the company maintained that the core desktop application remains free and unchanged.
