The open-source AI developer tool has grown to nearly nine million users.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Canadian-founded, Palo Alto-based software startup Ollama<\/a> has secured $65 million USD ($91 million CAD) in Series B funding to enable AI\u2019s \u201cpersonal computer moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The news: Ollama allows developers to download and run open-source large language models (LLMs) directly on their own computers. The 14-person AI infrastructure company claims it has amassed nearly nine million customers since launching in 2023 and is now used by 85 percent of the Fortune 500. Ollama aims to build on that growth with its Series B; the company announced<\/a> the round earlier this month. The financing, which brings its total funding to $88 million USD, was led by new US investor Theory Ventures, with help from existing backers like US-based Benchmark and Y Combinator, Kitchener-Waterloo\u2019s Garage Capital, and Vancouver-based GTMfund<\/a>, among others. Ollama plans to put this cash towards product development, computing power, and key hires.<\/p>\n From the source: \u201cAI is having its personal-computer moment. The mainframe era of computing gave way to the PC because computing became personal\u2014owned by you, running where you are, open enough that millions of people built on it,\u201d Ollama co-founder and CEO Jeff Morgan told BetaKit over email. \u201cWe believe the same shift is happening in AI right now, and Ollama is at the centre of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the thread: Morgan and Ollama co-founder Michael Chiang are both Canadian. The repeat tech entrepreneurs met at the University of Waterloo, and previously built Kitematic, another open-source software startup that made it easy to run San Francisco-based app development ecosystem Docker. That journey culminated in a 2015 sale<\/a> to Docker. The pair\u2019s work turned into Docker Desktop, which is now used by over 10 million developers daily. With Ollama, Morgan and Chiang are back with another open-source tool\u2014this time one aimed at helping developers access and run open AI models more easily. Morgan claims the startup is organically adding 100,000 users per week.<\/p>\n Final thought: Data from Leaders Fund<\/a> indicates Canada\u2019s most promising tech founders are increasingly fleeing the country<\/a> for the US, where they can raise more capital faster. Ollama looks to be part of this group: it was initially Toronto-based. Morgan said it relocated to Silicon Valley because \u201cthe Bay Area is the epicentre of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Feature image courtesy Ollama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The open-source AI developer tool has grown to nearly nine million users.
Canadian-founded, Palo Alto-based software startup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[345,18915,29322,134525,247275,250099,1756,250102,95175,85,46,170311,250098,56150,250100,181423,250,7896,129626,7130,125,250101,647,996],"class_list":["post-550468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-benchmark","tag-briefs","tag-developer-tools","tag-docker","tag-docker-desktop","tag-funding","tag-garage-capital","tag-gtmfund","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jeff-morgan","tag-kitematic","tag-leaders-fund","tag-michael-chiang","tag-ollama","tag-ontario","tag-open-source","tag-palo-alto","tag-software","tag-technology","tag-theory-ventures","tag-toronto","tag-y-combinator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}