Venice AI, which offers access to 200+ AI models while allowing users to retain their privacy, raised a $65M Series A led by Dragonfly at a $1B valuation
Concerns over the impact of AI chatbots on mental health, personal safety, harassment, and disinformation have forced AI developers …
TechCrunchRam Iyer
Context & Ripple Effects
Venice AI sits in a cluster of AI infrastructure and access-layer companies attracting substantial funding: Fal.ai is focused on hosting multimodal models for developers, webAI on local-device models, and Protect AI on securing enterprise AI systems. The common thread is that value is accruing not only to model creators but also to the layers that determine how models are deployed, accessed, and governed.
The related coverage also frames privacy as a salient differentiator as developers face pressure over chatbot safety, harassment, disinformation, and personal impacts. Venice’s model-agnostic access approach makes that positioning consequential: it competes on the conditions of use around models, rather than on a single proprietary model alone.
First-order effects
The new funding gives Venice AI greater capacity to build and operate its privacy-oriented access layer across a large set of AI models, while Dragonfly becomes a major backer of that strategy.
Users seeking model access with stronger privacy controls gain a better-capitalized alternative to platforms whose product design may require more centralized handling of user activity.
Second-order effects
Other model-hosting and AI access platforms face added pressure to make privacy, data handling, and user controls more visible product differentiators, not merely compliance features.
The investment reinforces demand for adjacent infrastructure—local execution, secure AI applications, and model hosting—as customers weigh where prompts, outputs, and model interactions are processed.
Third-order effects
If privacy-preserving access becomes a durable buying criterion, the AI market may split further between centralized, tightly managed services and providers designed to minimize data retention or enable more local control.
Safety pressure could make the access layer a more important point of industry governance: platforms that aggregate many models may increasingly be judged on both privacy protections and how they handle harmful uses.
The trend: AI investment is broadening from foundation models toward the infrastructure and access layers that let users choose models while controlling privacy, security, and operational risk.
VVV and Capital Measured by revenue, Venice has become the largest company at the intersection of AI and cryptoeconomics. Today, we announced Venice's first round of outside capital, a $65m Series A led by @dragonfly_xyz, valuing Venice's equity at $1 billion. Since we are
lot of people wanna understand if the venice raise is bullish or bearish for $vvv since it was an equity round. my read: bullish structure, execution-dependent outcome. the instruments are common. equity + token warrants are normal in crypto. what's uncommon is the sequencing.
This capital will be used to uphold the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution as they relate to mankind's interaction with AI. To those hearing about us for the first time, consider switching to an AI platform that doesn't demand control over you; that doesn't demand
It's unfortunate that the token vs equity split issue still exists in 2026 When you sell/distribute both equity and tokens to investors, you create two competing set of stakeholders with unclear boundaries of value accrual It's hard to expert serious capital to allocate to
Today, @askvenice announced a $65M Series A at a $1B valuation. We started this company in 2024 with a simple conviction: people deserve an AI platform that doesn't spy on them or decide what they're allowed to think. Our job was to build a private, unrestricted AI platform [imag…
sort of reminds me when KRO raised $50m from a16z due to the success of Moonbirds and Proof, his onchain asset which had no ties to equity all holders just wanted equity... really don't know how to think about it; the dual “equity” structure is starting to get exhausting
I deeply respect Erik and what he has done for crypto, and I am rooting for Venice. But token equity splits like this aren't defensible in crypto anymore. I can't see why buying this token would work out any differently than the thousands that have come before it.
Venice is about to shift into hyper growth mode! Congrats to the @AskVenice team on this round! Couldn't be more excited to be a long term $VVV holder @RelayerCapital. There is no other consumer product at the intersection of crypto and AI finding the level of adoption and growth
Venice is a mass market consumer AI company with a token. As the company succeeds in our mission to bring private and unrestricted access to machine intelligence, so too will base:0xacfe6019ed1a7dc6f7b508c02d1b04ec 88cc21bf.
The Series A investors received the following in return for the $65m in new capital: • 8.98% of the company • Vesting grant of 1.5m VVV • The right to buy 5m VVV in the next eight years. To exercise the right (token warrant, aka call option), investors must pay Venice an
Congrats to @ErikVoorhees @jesseproudman and the @AskVenice team on this raise! This demonstrates that a project can start off crypto-native with a token incentive mechanism to bootstrap the product and actually achieve pmf and unicorn status Let this be inspiration for others
I turned very bullish on Venice when I realized it's one of the very few fundamentally solid decentralized AI projects out there. I turned very bearish on $VVV when I read equity. I don't want to accuse @ErikVoorhees of anything here. I see how this raise is strategically