Ollama, the popular open-source AI developer tool, has raised $65 million in a Series B funding round led by Theory Ventures. The company previously secured $15 million in Series A funding from Benchmark’s Peter Fenton. With the new investment, Ollama has raised a total of $88 million. The funding comes as the company continues to expand its user base, now reaching nearly 9 million developers globally.
Ollama, launched in 2023, enables developers to run open-weight AI models on their PCs, significantly reducing the time required to set up and use these models. The tool has gained widespread acclaim, with 176,000 stars and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub. Developers can access larger, more complex models hosted on Ollama’s neocloud through various subscription tiers, ranging from free to $100 per month. The platform also tracks usage based on GPU time rather than token limits, offering greater flexibility.
Ollama’s founders, Jeff Morgan and Michael Chiang, previously developed Docker Desktop, which was acquired by Docker. Morgan noted that open models became available in 2023 but were difficult to use, primarily targeting researchers rather than programmers. "As a result, it was really hard to get them up and running," Morgan said. Three years after its launch, Ollama is now used by over 8.9 million developers monthly, with a presence in 85% of the Fortune 500 companies. All this has been achieved with only 14 employees.
Source: techcrunch
