Venice AI

Venice AI is a privacy-first AI platform founded in May 2024 by Erik Voorhees, the entrepreneur behind the crypto exchange ShapeShift. Rather than build its own model, Venice offers a single interface to more than 200 open-source and closed AI models for chat, image generation, and code — while promising that prompts and outputs are never logged or stored on its servers. Inputs are encrypted on the user's device and routed through proxies to the model providers, and conversation history lives locally in the browser rather than in Venice's cloud. The company positions itself as a neutral, uncensored alternative to mainstream assistants, with an optional crypto payment path built around its VVV token. Venice raised a $65 million Series A led by the crypto firm Dragonfly in 2026 — its first outside funding — with Coinbase Ventures and North Island Ventures participating, and says it turned profitable in early 2026. It is led by CEO Erik Voorhees and COO Teana Baker-Taylor, a former Circle executive, and is headquartered in San Francisco.