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Ollama raises $88M, now used by 85% of Fortune 500

A single command to bring up an open-source large model locally—that's the promise of Ollama, a tool that has freed countless developers from API keys and exorbitant bills. Now, it has secured the fuel for its next phase. On July 9, Ollama announced an $88 million funding round led by Benchmark's Peter Fenton, Theory Ventures' Tomasz Tunguz, and 8VC's Alex Kolicich. The investor list reads like a who's who of tech: Docker founder Solomon Hykes, ClickHouse CEO Aaron Katz, GIMP co-founder and Cockroach Labs co-founder Spencer Kimball, Amp CEO Quinn Slack, Cisco board member Marianna Tessel, former Twitter engineering head Michael Montano, plus Y Combinator, Garage Capital, Pace Capital, 49 Palms, and GTMFund.

The company's founders, Jeff and Michael, have been on a similar mission for a decade. They met in college and founded Kitematic, which made running Docker dead simple. Docker acquired it in 2015, and their work later became Docker Desktop, now used by over ten million developers. Ten years later, they've applied the same philosophy to AI: make complex technology accessible to all. Ollama's goal is to let developers start and run open-source models with minimal effort. The result? The platform has already served 8.9 million developers and is adopted by 85% of Fortune 500 companies.

In Ollama's view, open-source models are ushering in a PC-like moment for AI. Just as PCs brought computing power from mainframe rooms to every desktop, allowing people to own, customize, and build upon them, open-source models are doing the same today. A few years ago, powerful free open-source models existed, but getting them to run smoothly was fraught with obstacles. The capability was there, yet it felt locked behind a door. Developers couldn't use them as easily as calling a proprietary model's API. Ollama's solution is an application you download to your computer. With a single command, you start the latest open-source model and build on it through a simple API. Running open-source models becomes as easy as running any ordinary software—no permissions, no API keys, no expensive server hardware. Your model, your machine, your data.

The product is built around three principles: ownership, affordability, and privacy. Ownership means open-source models belong to you. You can keep, customize, and optimize them anytime, without being locked into a specific model that your agent or application depends on. Affordability comes from running models on your own hardware, eliminating runaway billing based on tokens. Experiments, iterations, and releases no longer need to worry about each prompt adding to the cost. Privacy ensures data never leaves your local machine. Even if it goes to the cloud for expansion, the same level of trust carries over.

Open-source models are no longer just toys in laboratories. Ollama Cloud has become the most convenient one-stop access to powerful open-source models, including GLM, Nemotron, DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax, and more. Its token usage grows by more than 100% monthly on average. What began as the joy of running a model for the first time on a personal computer has now expanded to tackle tough challenges once reserved for closed-source models.

This $88 million is fuel to push the ecosystem forward. Ollama sits at the core of the open-source model ecosystem, and the funds will go into three areas: seamless hybrid reasoning, support for newly released open-source models on the day they launch, and a cloud service that lets any developer and their team use the most powerful models without sacrificing ownership or privacy. Jeff and Michael wrote in their announcement that they've stood at the beginning of similar changes before, betting that openness and ease of use would ultimately prevail. Now, they're putting everything on the line again. With 85% of Fortune 500 companies quietly moving open-source models into their internal systems, the next carriage on this open-source train clearly still has plenty of seats available.

Key Points

  • Ollama raised $88 million from top investors including Benchmark and Docker's founder.
  • The platform is used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies and 8.9 million developers.
  • Ollama lets users run open-source models locally with a single command, emphasizing ownership, affordability, and privacy.
  • Funds will be used for hybrid reasoning, rapid model support, and a cloud service.