Ollama raises $88 million to expand local AI platform

Ollama, an open‑source tool that lets developers run large AI models on personal computers, closed a Series B financing round of $65 million led by Theory Ventures. The round brings the company’s total capital raised to $88 million, following a $15 million Series A backed by Benchmark’s Peter Fenton. Founders Jeff Morgan and Michael Chiang, who previously built Docker’s Kitematic, said the new funds will support hybrid local‑and‑cloud inference, add support for emerging open‑weight models, and improve the cloud service that charges by GPU time rather than per token.

The firm reports 8.9 million active developers each month and usage in about 85 percent of Fortune‑500 companies. Ollama’s model allows data to stay on‑device, avoiding the need to send information to external servers. The company’s cloud offering includes free tiers and paid plans up to $100 per month. Investors in the round also include 8VC, Docker founder Solomon Hykes, and ClickHouse CEO Aaron Katz.

The financing underscores growing interest in locally runnable AI, which promises lower latency, better data privacy, and reduced reliance on major cloud providers.