Venice AI just became a unicorn. The privacy-focused AI startup raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch AI, which landed an exclusive interview with CEO Erik Voorhees. It’s the company’s first outside fundraise, and it comes barely two years after launch.
What stands out here is the pitch: Venice gives users access to more than 200 AI models while promising it stores none of their data. That’s the whole product. And demand for it is real.
What Venice actually does
Venice runs “uncensored,” open-source models on its own data centers and routes other queries out to closed models from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. The privacy mechanics are the selling point:
- All user input is encrypted and decrypted client-side.
- Queries route through an external proxy before processing.
- Nothing gets stored on Venice’s own systems.
- End-to-end encryption is available on some models, but only if you pay.
Users pick from models that generate text, images, audio, and video, each with different quality and different levels of censorship. The site also pushes customizable AI “characters” you can chat with. Voorhees frames the whole thing as respecting adults: “We’re optimizing for freedom and actually respecting users as adults, which is, I think, rare these days,” he told TechCrunch AI.
The numbers behind the raise
This isn’t a company running on promise alone. Per TechCrunch AI, Venice reports:
- 850,000+ unique website visitors
- 3 million+ active users
- 1.7 million API calls per day on average
- Over $70 million in annualized run-rate revenue, and already profitable
Profitable, at scale, in two years. That combination is what pulled investors in. The round was led by crypto-focused firm Dragonfly, with Coinbase Ventures and North Island Ventures joining.
Why crypto investors, and why it matters
The investor list isn’t a coincidence. Voorhees is a longtime bitcoin advocate who founded gambling site Satoshi Dice and crypto exchange ShapeShift. His privacy stance has always been absolutist. When a Wall Street Journal investigation once accused ShapeShift of processing suspect funds, he reportedly said he didn’t think people should have their identity recorded “to catch an occasional criminal.”
He applies the same logic to AI. Asked about AI psychosis and real-world harm tied to chatbots, Voorhees called Venice a “neutral tool or a neutral platform,” comparing it to Bitcoin as a neutral protocol. “I think it’s actually quite dangerous from a safety perspective, for the world to enter this next phase and have everyone be constantly watched,” he said.
Here’s the tension worth watching. The rest of the industry is moving toward more guardrails as pressure mounts over mental health, harassment, and disinformation. Venice is betting the opposite way, that a meaningful slice of users wants fewer restrictions and more privacy. So far, the revenue says that bet is paying.
The token angle
There are two crypto tokens attached. VVV launched in January as a user-acquisition play, and DIEM followed. Users buy and stake VVV to mint DIEM, which throws off $1 of daily AI credits. But don’t overstate it: Voorhees said only about 8% of users actually pay with crypto. He credited the tokens for some growth, but named the real driver as catching up to ChatGPT.
“When we launched, we were very far away from what ChatGPT could do,” he said. “And today, we’re very close.” As that gap closed, privacy stopped being a trade-off and started being a bonus.
What comes next
Venice plans to spend the fresh cash on GPUs and its own data centers, moving off leased hardware to widen gross margins. Owning the compute also deepens the privacy story, since fewer third parties touch the pipeline.
The bigger question is whether “neutral platform” holds up as scrutiny grows. Regulators and safety advocates won’t love the uncensored framing. For now, Venice has revenue, a billion-dollar tag, and a clear thesis. More details are in the original TechCrunch AI report.