Crypto Vet's Venice AI Raises $65M, Hits $1B Valuation on Trust-Based Pitch

Venice AI, a platform founded by crypto veteran Erik Voorhees, has raised $65 million and achieved a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by Dragonfly with Coinbase Ventures participating, betting that trust is more valuable than raw model capability in the AI industry.

Voorhees spent over a decade building crypto companies on the premise that money doesn't need intermediaries watching transactions. With Venice AI, he's applying this logic to chatbots. The platform gives users access to over 200 AI models, mixing open source systems with queries to closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The company is already profitable, running at an annualized revenue rate of north of $70 million without taking a dollar of venture money until now. This is rare in the industry where compute costs often bury revenue before it reaches the bottom line.