Voorhees' Privacy Unicorn Just Bagged $65M—Even While Letting the Bots Stay Censored-Free

Venice AI, the privacy-focused artificial intelligence platform founded by cryptocurrency veteran Erik Voorhees, has reached a $1 billion valuation after closing a $65 million Series A, the company's first outside funding round since launching in May 2024. Founder Erik Voorhees announced the raise on Wednesday via X, framing the capital as backing for Venice's mission to build a private, uncensored alternative to mainstream chatbots. "This aversion to ubiquitous centralized surveillance and control is our philosophical foundation, and upon it Venice is growing rapidly," Voorhees wrote.

The round was led by Dragonfly, with participation from North Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Archetype, Liquid2 Ventures, F-Prime, and Morgan Creek. Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, said, "Control over intelligence is the defining fight of the coming decade. Whoever owns the AI delivery stack owns a direct window into your interior life. They log all your chats, train on them, and will hand them over when asked. And in the end, they decide the terms on which you'll get to access the most powerful systems humankind has ever built."

Venice AI, which the company says has grown to 3.5 million users, offers access to over 200 AI models through a single interface and API. For models operated by OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Google, Venice routes requests through a proxy that obscures users' IP address, account and session data, while other models on the platform offer higher levels of privacy by default. Voorhees said the new capital will fund the buildout of proprietary data center infrastructure, including owned GPUs, as well as customer acquisition, geographic expansion, hiring and "additive" acquisitions. "In April, we hit 3 million users, and as of Q1, in an environment where AI firms were losing money while spying on you, Venice became profitable while choosing not to," Voorhees wrote.

The funding arrives amid heightened scrutiny over AI data practices. In May, a proposed class action was filed in California federal court accusing OpenAI of sharing ChatGPT data with third parties, and earlier this year lawyers told Cointelegraph that user chat logs from AI services could potentially be used against individuals in court. In February, Ethereum Foundation AI lead Davide Crapis and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed using zero-knowledge proofs and related methods to keep interactions with large language models private.

Venice AI's native token, $VVV, rose following the announcement and was trading at $13.74, up 11% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The company also trimmed $VVV emissions on Wednesday to 3 million per year, with newly issued tokens awarded to holders who stake to support the network. Voorhees tied Venice's stated privacy stance to U.S. constitutional protections, writing, "This capital will be used to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution as they relate to mankind's interaction with AI."