American company from Palo Alto behind the open-source Ollama runtime for running large language models locally and in the cloud. Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Morgan and Michael Chiang (previously Docker Desktop via Kitematic). Closed a $65M Series B round in July 2026.
Ollama Inc. is an American technology company headquartered in Palo Alto (California), founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Morgan (CEO) and Michael Chiang, both Y Combinator alumni. The company builds and maintains the open-source Ollama project (MIT License) — the most popular way to run large language models locally on the user's machine.
The project first launched on July 7, 2023. By July 2026 it had grown a community of 9 million active developers who use Ollama to run models like Llama, Mistral, Qwen, Gemma, DeepSeek, gpt-oss and many others locally. Ollama provides a command-line interface, a native desktop app, a local REST API (port 11434 by default), and Python and JavaScript client libraries.
The business model combines open source with commercial services: Ollama Cloud offers access to larger models on datacenter-grade hardware in the US, Europe and Singapore regions with a zero data retention guarantee. In July 2026 the company announced a $65M Series B round led by Theory Ventures, raised alongside a milestone of 9 million active developers.
Founders
Software engineer, previously co-built Docker Desktop (through Docker acquisition of the Kitematic startup). Originator of Ollama — a project that brought the docker pull and docker run paradigm to local large language models.
Previously Docker Desktop (via Kitematic, acquired by Docker) and Y Combinator. At Ollama responsible for business development, community and model partnerships.
Classification
