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[ARTICLE · art-52677] src=tomtunguz.com ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=↑ positive

8.9 Million AI Users

Ollama, an AI platform that simplifies running open-source models locally, has reached 8.9 million developers and is used by 85% of the Fortune 500. The company raised $65 million in Series B funding led by an unnamed investor, with participation from Benchmark and Y Combinator, to expand its developer-friendly AI tools.

read2 min views1 publishedJul 9, 2026
8.9 Million AI Users
Image: Tomtunguz (auto-discovered)

It all started when I knocked on a door in Palo Alto.

I noticed the little llama icon on the door & remembered how much I loved the product. Michael opened the door & welcomed me in. That is how I became friends with the Ollama founders, Jeff Morgan & Michael Chiang.

Since then, I have migrated most of my workloads to Ollama ; it turns out I’m not alone. More than 8.9m developers use Ollama, a number growing by nearly one million every week.

These users run Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Hermes, & 65,000 more applications & integrations on top of Ollama.

Ollama makes AI simple. Download the app & start running AI on your laptop in seconds. Here it is running on my Macbook :

I run open source models locally for 70-80% of my work & then burst to the Ollama cloud for complex tasks ; a cloud that is twice as fast as others.

85% of the Fortune 500 uses Ollama across healthcare, finance, & energy. We found Ollama monitoring electricity loads at a powerplant in Finland ; at a space agency in the USA ; in the CFO’s office at a public company validating financials ; & even at a particle accelerator.

Data never leaves the user’s machine when running locally. Businesses can customize their AI & own it.

Ollama has partnered with every major open-source model provider including Google, Meta, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Zhipu, DeepSeek. Ollama offers thousands of models like GLM-5.2, Kimi K2.7, Gemma, Qwen, & Ornith.

Today we announced our investment leading Ollama’s $65m Series B, alongside Benchmark, YC, & others.

The future of AI is open models running everywhere work gets done. Jeff & Michael built Docker’s developer experience. Now they’re building it for AI.

If you want to run an open model, start here.

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