Privacy-Focused Venice AI Becomes Unicorn After $65 Million Funding Round

Crypto entrepreneur Erik Voorhees founded Venice AI in 2024 as a generative AI platform focused on privacy and fewer content restrictions, offering access to more than 200 models. The platform says it does not store prompts on its servers and keeps conversations on users’ devices. Privacy and freedom of expression have become its key differentiators amid growing concern over data collection by AI companies.

Venice AI said on July 1, 2026, that it had raised $65 million in a Series A round led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others, at an equity valuation of $1 billion. Investors received an 8.98% equity stake, 1.5 million VVV tokens and 5 million warrants. The equity-and-token structure sparked debate in the community. Venice AI will use the funding to build its own data centers, purchase GPUs and expand its API business.