Running a large language model used to require either a corporate budget or a PhD in cloud infrastructure. Ollama changed that. The open-source tool lets developers spin up AI models on their own laptops with roughly the same effort as installing a podcast app.
Ollama has raised $65 million in a funding round led by Benchmark, as the company looks to scale its developer platform to 9 million users.
What Ollama actually does
The tool allows developers to download and run open-source models, such as Meta’s Llama series or Mistral’s releases, directly on their own machines. No API keys, no usage bills, no sending your data to a third party.
The company’s GitHub repository has accumulated approximately 176,000 stars and around 16,900 forks. Monthly downloads reached 52 million as of early 2026.
