Venice AI, a platform offering access to more than 200 AI models while emphasizing user privacy, announced a $65 million Series A round at a $1 billion valuation, its first external fundraise. The round was led by crypto-focused venture firm Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures and others. The company, founded two years ago, reports more than 850,000 unique website visitors, 3 million active users, and annualized run-rate revenue exceeding $70 million, according to CEO Erik Voorhees.
Venice hosts open source models on its own infrastructure while routing some queries to closed-source models from providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, encrypting user input and storing no data on its own systems. Voorhees, an early bitcoin advocate and founder of previous crypto ventures including ShapeShift, described Venice as a neutral platform, arguing that widespread monitoring of AI usage poses greater risks than allowing open access, including in cases involving controversial or sensitive queries.
The platform allows users to select from AI models generating text, images, audio and video, with varying levels of content moderation, and features customizable AI characters marketed as an uncensored experience. Venice also operates two associated crypto tokens, VVV and DIEM, though Voorhees said only about 8% of users pay using cryptocurrency. The company plans to use the new funding to build its own data centers and reduce reliance on leased GPU infrastructure.
