Ollama has Raised $88M to Enable Every Developer Run Open Models

Ollama, providing the easiest way to build with open models, led by Jeffrey Morgan and Michael Chiang, has raised  $88M from Peter Fenton at Benchmark, Tomasz Tunguz at Theory Ventures, Alex Kolicich at 8VC, along with Solomon Hykes (founder of Docker), Aaron Katz (CEO of ClickHouse), Spencer Kimball (co-creator of GIMP and co-founder of Cockroach Labs), Quinn Slack (CEO of Amp), Marianna Tessel (board of directors, Cisco), Michael Montano (former head of engineering at Twitter), and Y Combinator, Garage Capital, Pace Capital, 49 Palms, GTMFund, and many other incredible angel investors.

Founded by longtime collaborators who previously created Kitematic, later acquired by Docker, where it evolved into Docker Desktop, Ollama is building a platform that makes it easy for developers to run and deploy open-AI models. The platform has rapidly grown to serve 8.9 million developers, becoming one of the leading ways to access and use open-source AI models.

Ollama aims to make open-AI models as accessible as personal computers made computing, enabling developers to download, run, and build with models directly on their own machines. The platform simplifies deployment through a single-command setup and a developer-friendly API, removing the need for API keys, cloud infrastructure, or specialized hardware.

By allowing models to run locally, Ollama gives developers greater control over their AI applications, data, and workflows while making open-source AI easier to adopt.

Ollama is built around three core principles: ownership, affordability, and privacy. The platform enables developers to run, customize, and optimize open-source AI models without vendor lock-in, reducing reliance on usage-based API costs while allowing applications to run on local hardware.

By supporting local deployment, Ollama also gives users greater control over their data and privacy, while offering the flexibility to scale workloads to the cloud when needed.

Open models are increasingly being adopted in enterprise environments, with Ollama reporting usage by 85% of Fortune 500 companies. The platform has expanded beyond local deployments to offer cloud access to leading open models, including GLM, Nemotron, DeepSeek, Kimi, and MiniMax, as demand for enterprise-scale AI workloads continues to grow.

Ollama said usage of its cloud platform has more than doubled in token volume on average each month, reflecting rapid adoption of open-source AI across organizations.

The funding will support the expansion of Ollama’s platform with capabilities including hybrid inference, rapid support for newly released open models, and cloud services that preserve developer ownership and privacy. The company also plans to continue strengthening the open-source AI ecosystem by making advanced open models easier for developers and teams to deploy at scale.