Venice AI raises $65M Series A at $1B valuation, profitable privacy-first AI hits unicorn status

Venice AI, a privacy-focused artificial intelligence platform, has raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation, the company said Wednesday. The round was the startup's first external fundraise. It was led by crypto-focused venture firm Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures and others, TechCrunch reported. CEO Erik Voorhees told TechCrunch the company is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million. Venice AI offers access to more than 200 AI models and hosts uncensored, open-source models on its own data centers. All user input is encrypted and decrypted client-side and routed through an external proxy, with no data stored on Venice's own systems, according to the company. The platform has more than 850,000 unique visitors to its website, more than 3 million active users and averages 1.7 million API calls per day, TechCrunch reported. Voorhees, an early bitcoin advocate, previously founded cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift and bitcoin gambling site Satoshi Dice. Venice said it plans to use the new capital to buy GPUs and build its own data centers rather than leasing them.