Venice announced that it has raised $65 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, North Island Ventures, and other investors.
The financing represents Venice’s first outside capital. The company plans to use the funding to scale its consumer app and API globally.
Venice is a private and unrestricted AI platform that gives users access to more than 200 AI models across text, image, video, and audio. The company is positioning itself around privacy, open access, and user control as more personal and professional activity moves through AI tools.
Venice says it does not log prompts. Conversations are stored locally on the user’s device rather than on Venice’s servers.
The company’s privacy architecture is designed so Venice does not possess user conversation data in the first place. Venice said this approach keeps personal information out of corporate and government databases.
Venice also says it does not decide what users can ask. The company’s platform is built around a free speech principle, giving users access to AI models without account surveillance, permanent prompt records, or gatekeeping around curiosity.
The platform has grown to 3.5 million registered users. Venice also processes 1.3 trillion tokens per month and handles about 2 million API calls per day from developers.
At peak usage, Venice said it has processed more than 300,000 inference requests per hour. The company also reports 1.3 million to 1.6 million site visits per month from approximately 850,000 to 1 million unique visitors.
Venice’s token economy has also expanded alongside usage. The company said 33.7 million VVV has been burned, representing about 42% of total supply, while emissions step down from 4 million to 3 million per year on July 1.
Venice was founded in 2024 by Erik Voorhees. The company’s goal is to enable people and software agents to access machine intelligence without sacrificing privacy.
Venice is available through web, mobile, and API access. The company said the Series A will help bring private and unrestricted AI to more users globally.
KEY QUOTE:
“Intelligence, the lifeblood of civilizational advancement, is becoming a collaboration between man and machine. Venice’s mission is to protect it from mass surveillance and censorship.”
Erik Voorhees, Founder and CEO of Venice
