Ollama raises $65 million Series B as its local-model tool hits 8.9 million monthly users

Ollama, the open-source local-model runtime, raised a $65 million Series B led by Theory Ventures, the company said on July 9, 2026, and disclosed that it now serves 8.9 million developers a month.

The round follows a $15 million Series A led by Benchmark’s Peter Fenton, with Theory Ventures’ Tomasz Tunguz leading the new financing. Ollama’s own blog post puts total funding raised at $88 million, including backers such as 8VC and Y Combinator and angel investors including Docker founder Solomon Hykes.

The headline number is the reach relative to the headcount. Ollama said it runs with 14 employees while its tool, which lets developers download and run open models locally instead of calling a cloud API, is present in 85% of the Fortune 500. The user and reach figures are the company’s own.

The traction points at steady demand for running models on local hardware, where privacy, cost and offline use favor open weights over metered cloud calls. Founders Jeff Morgan and Michael Chiang have done this before: they built Kitematic, a Docker desktop tool acquired by Docker in 2015.

The open question is money. Ollama’s growth is in free downloads, and the company has not detailed how it converts 8.9 million monthly developers into revenue that justifies the raise. A tiny team is efficient, but it also limits how fast a business model can be built out.

Whether Ollama turns its user base into paying customers will decide if the local-model tool becomes a company or stays a widely used utility.