In short
- Venice AI raised $65 million at a $1 billion valuation in its first round of external funding.
- Founder Erik Voorhees said the company has surpassed 3 million users and has been profitable.
- Voorhees said AI management — not modeling skills — is becoming the biggest challenge in the market.
Venice AI has raised $65 million in its first round of external funding at a $1 billion valuation, founder Erik Voorhees announced Wednesday.
In a post on X, Voorhees—a veteran of the cryptocurrency industry who is best known as the founder of the ShapeShift exchange—said that the investment validates Venice’s goal of building a private, decentralized AI platform like ChatGPT.
“Aversion to control and centralization at all levels is the foundation of our philosophy, and on that Venice is growing rapidly,” Voorhees wrote. “In April, we hit 3 million users, and as of Q1, in an environment where AI companies are losing money on intelligence, Venice made a profit and chose not to.”
It has been established in May 2024, Venice AI is a privacy-focused approach to AI-based chatbots that are designed not to store user conversations on the company’s central servers. The round was led by Dragonfly, with participation from North Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Archetype, Liquid2 Ventures, and Morgan Creek.
Venice AI natural symbol (Tourist Office) rose following the funding announcement and is currently trading at $13.74, up 11% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The release of VVV was also scheduled for Wednesday up to 3 million per year, which is given to token holders who invest their VVV to support the network. This means that fewer tokens are added to the stock each year.
While AI developers, including Anthropic’s Darius Amodei and OpenAI Sam Altmanhave warned of the dangers associated with borderline models, Voorhees said the industry is paying close attention. dismissal and cybersecurity they ignore what they see as the biggest threat: the erosion of privacy as AI reshapes the relationship between people and their minds.
“Perhaps it’s not the loss of jobs or cyber security incidents that should scare us the most, but the fact that our knowledge is increasing and being scrutinized – our minds are now built in accordance with the consent of these dystopian tools,” he wrote.
Voorhees said the new funding will be used to expand the Venice platform, which provides advanced access to proprietary AIs through a single interface and API, while advancing what he described as First and Fourth Safety in human-AI interactions.
“We will create an independent and borderless platform; an open, tolerant port city that respects the rights of residents, individuals and organizations,” he said.
The announcement comes as AI privacy is garnering attention in Washington. Earlier this year, lawmakers introduced legislation they require documents on government-aided surveillance and AI, while the FBI said to be expanded its use of AI in research, threat analysis, and facial recognition.
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