Seattle-linked startup Venice.ai has vaulted into unicorn territory, raising $65 million in a Series A that pegs the company’s value at roughly $1 billion. It is a swift rise for the two-year-old “private AI” service, which pitches itself as an uncensored alternative to mainstream chatbots. The round is Venice’s first outside funding and arrives as the company says it has reached millions of users and moved into the black. Founders Erik Voorhees and Jesse Proudman have cast the product as a privacy-first option for people who are skeptical of centralized data collection.
According to Venice.ai, the Series A was led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, Archetype, Morgan Creek, Liquid2 Ventures and Seattle’s Founders’ Co-op. The company said the $65 million haul values Venice at about $1 billion and will go toward scaling its consumer app and developer API around the globe. Venice’s announcement pointed to growth metrics, including roughly 3.5 million registered users and heavy token-processing volumes, as key reasons the round came together.
Privacy pitch and product
Venice describes itself as a "private, unrestricted" platform that routes encrypted inputs through client devices and an external proxy so conversations are not stored on Venice servers. As reported by TechCrunch, the startup offers a catalog of open-source and commercial models and provides paid end-to-end encryption for some users. CEO Erik Voorhees told TechCrunch, "We're optimizing for freedom and actually respecting users as adults," presenting the approach as a tradeoff between user sovereignty and centralized oversight.
Tokens, revenue and the business model
Venice makes money through subscriptions and paid API access, and it also runs a token economy. Developers can buy VVV tokens and lock them to reserve compute capacity instead of paying per use. Per GeekWire, the company said it turned profitable in the first quarter and has grown to roughly 45 employees from about 15 a year ago, with six of those staffers in Seattle. Investors cited the token program and early profit metrics as factors in their decision to back Venice’s next phase of expansion.
Seattle ties and state politics
Jesse Proudman, Venice’s president and CTO, is based in Seattle and has spent decades building companies in the region. Proudman told GeekWire, "I love it here ... Seattle is a unique and phenomenal place to build a company," even as he has publicly opposed Washington’s new 9.9% "millionaires tax" and warned he may not remain in the state if the levy goes into effect. The contrast underscores how state-level policy is starting to shape founders’ decisions about where to hire and base operations.
What to watch
Investors told reporters they backed Venice in part so the company could start buying GPUs and build its own data-center capacity instead of leasing compute, a shift aimed at improving margins. As reported by TechCrunch, the startup is already posting an annualized revenue run rate north of $70 million, a figure that will be closely watched once heavy hardware spending kicks in. At the same time, privacy-first, less restricted models raise fresh questions about misuse and moderation, a policy debate Venice will have to navigate if it wants to go fully mainstream.
