Venice AI secures $65M Series A reaches $1B valuation

Venice AI, a privacy-focused artificial intelligence platform, has achieved a $1 billion valuation after raising $65 million in its first round of outside funding. The Series A round, led by the venture firm Dragonfly, was announced on July 1, 2026, and establishes the startup as a major player at the intersection of AI and data sovereignty.

The company was founded in mid-2024 by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Erik Voorhees, known for the ShapeShift exchange, and Jesse Proudman, a cloud computing entrepreneur. Venice AI differentiates itself by not storing user conversations on its servers. Instead, it employs client-side encryption and decentralized infrastructure, meaning even the company cannot access a user's chat history. The platform provides access to over 200 open-source and proprietary AI models for text, image, audio, and video generation through a single interface.

Chief Executive Erik Voorhees framed the investment as validation for a model that prioritizes privacy over surveillance. He argued that while many in the industry focus on risks like job displacement, the central challenge is the erosion of privacy as AI mediates human thought. The company's design, he...