The NumbersJuly 9, 2026via TechCrunch Startups
Popular open source AI developer tool Ollama raises $65M, grows to nearly 9M users
Why it matters
Ollama's funding validates a counter-trend: developers are moving AI workloads off cloud infrastructure and onto local machines. At 9M users and 176K GitHub stars, the open-source runtime is becoming the standard layer between models and developer tools—a shift that threatens SaaS API consumption models.
Key signals
- $65M funding round
- Nearly 9M users
- 176,000 GitHub stars
- 17,000 GitHub forks
- Open-source developer tool for local AI inference
- Enables developers to run AI models on PCs without cloud dependency
The hook
$65M. That's what Ollama just raised—and it's reshaping how developers build AI locally instead of cloud-dependent.
Benchmark-backed Ollama has amassed 176,000 stars, and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub by helping developers easily run AI on their PCs.