Venice AI Hits Unicorn Status With $65M Series A for Privacy-First AI

Venice AI has raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation, vaulting the privacy-focused AI platform into unicorn territory with its first outside capital. Dragonfly led the round, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, and North Island Ventures.

The startup, founded by ShapeShift creator and longtime crypto advocate Erik Voorhees alongside Jesse Proudman, has built its pitch around a simple contrast with the AI giants: use the best models without handing over your data.

Privacy as the Product

Venice gives users access to more than 200 AI models spanning text, image, video, and audio. The company hosts uncensored open-source models in its own facilities and can also route queries to closed-source models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The architectural difference is what happens to user data: Venice never logs prompts, and conversations are stored on-device rather than on the company's servers. Queries are encrypted client-side and routed through an external proxy before processing, with optional end-to-end encryption available on some models for subscribers.

That positioning appears to be resonating. The platform counts 3.5 million registered users and processes 1.3 trillion tokens per month, and the company says it is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenue above $70 million.

From Leasing GPUs to Owning Them

The new capital has a clear destination: hardware. Voorhees said the company plans to start buying GPUs and building its own data centers so it can stop leasing compute and improve its gross margins — a move that also deepens its control over the privacy guarantees at the heart of the product.

Owning infrastructure is an unusual step for a Series A company, but it fits Venice's thesis. A platform that promises user data never touches third-party systems has an obvious incentive to run its own metal.

The Crypto Thread

Voorhees' crypto roots run through the business. Venice launched its VVV token in January 2026 after adding the DIEM token in August 2025, though crypto remains a minority payment rail — only about 8% of users pay that way.

The bigger story is the market signal. As frontier AI labs face growing scrutiny over data retention and training practices, Venice's rapid rise — and Dragonfly's willingness to price it at $1 billion on a first outside round — suggests investors see privacy not as a niche feature, but as a durable wedge into the consumer AI market.