Venice AI becomes a unicorn with $65M Series A as its privacy-first AI platform takes off
7:25 AM PDT · July 1, 2026
Venice AI, which offers access to more than 200 AI models while allowing users to retain their privacy, has raised 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.
Just two years in, Venice AI has more than 850,000 unique website visitors, serves more than 3 million active users, and averages 1.7 million API calls per day. The company is already profitable with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, CEO Erik Voorhees told TechCrunch.
Privacy architecture
Venice hosts “uncensored” open source models on its own data centers and routes queries to closed-source models (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.). All user input is encrypted and unencrypted client-side, routed through an external proxy before processing, with no data stored on Venice systems. End-to-end encryption available on some models via paid subscription.
Voorhees, an early bitcoin advocate and founder of ShapeShift, frames Venice as a “neutral tool or neutral platform” — optimizing for user freedom and treating users as adults rather than imposing censorship safeguards.
Users choose from 200+ models for text, image, audio, and video generation with varying censorship levels. The platform features customizable AI “characters.”
Crypto tokens
Venice launched token “VVV” in early January and added “DIEM” in August 2025. Users stake VVV to mint DIEM generating $1/day of AI credits. Only ~8% of users pay with crypto.
Voorhees credited growth to crypto token performance and closing the feature gap with ChatGPT: “When we launched, we were very far away from what ChatGPT could do, but people would use us because it was private. Today, we’re very close.”
Plans
Use fresh capital to buy GPUs and build own data centers, moving off leased GPUs to increase gross margins.