Erik Voorhees’ Venice AI just hit unicorn status. The company raised $65 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation.
Dragonfly led the round. Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, North Island Ventures, and Morgan Creek also chipped in. It’s Venice’s first outside capital since launching in 2024.
The timing isn’t random. Anthropic was forced to cut foreign access to two of its newest models just last month. OpenAI got hit with a class-action lawsuit over sharing ChatGPT data with third parties. Privacy in AI is suddenly a very big deal.
Voorhees framed it in constitutional terms: “This capital will be used to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments as they relate to mankind’s interaction with AI.”
Venice claims 3.5 million users. The platform offers over 200 AI models but adds a proxy layer between the user and the model. For OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Google models, that proxy obscures IP addresses, account data, and session info. Some models offer even more privacy.
“Control over intelligence is the defining fight of the coming decade,” said Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi. “Whoever owns the AI delivery stack owns a direct window into your interior life.”
Venice plans to use the cash to build its own data center infrastructure — owning GPUs instead of renting them at inflated prices. They’ll also hire, expand into new markets, and potentially acquire businesses.
The broader context: AI privacy concerns are boiling over. A proposed class action in May accused OpenAI of embedding Meta Pixel and Google Analytics into ChatGPT.com, allegedly sending user data to both companies alongside ad cookies. That suit is ongoing.
