Venice AI becomes a unicorn with $65M Series A as its privacy-first AI platform takes off
Venice AI is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, CEO Erik Voorhees said. Concerns over the impact of AI chatbots on mental health , personal safety , harassment , and disinformation have forced AI developers to implement safeguards to better control how and what their AI models are allowed to respond or do. But concerns and worries can't erode demand.
Key Takeaways
- AI offers a lot of promise, and people don't want a faceless tech company to restrict their access to that potential.
And if they can preserve their privacy while they use AI models however they want, why not?
- All user input is encrypted and unencrypted client-side, and routed through an external proxy before it is processed and returned, with no data stored on Venice's own systems.
It also provides end-to-end encryption on some models, though you have to pay for a subscription to get that feature.
- The overlap between Voorhees, Venice's focus on privacy, and its new crypto investors is hard to miss, especially given the CEO's background and past work.
An early bitcoin advocate, Voorhees has founded a few crypto companies, including bitcoin gambling site Satoshi Dice and cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift , and has long advocated in favor of preserving users' privacy.
- To me that is actually much more dangerous than any particular person asking a controversial question or something that might be considered bad.
- Unsurprisingly, there are two crypto tokens associated with the effort.
Stats & Key Facts
- #Venice AI is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, CEO Erik Voorhees said.
- #Venice AI is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, CEO Erik Voorhees said.
- #Venice AI , which offers access to more than 200 AI models while allowing users to retain their privacy, is raking it in thanks to that demand.
- #Just two years in, the company already has more than 850,000 unique visitors to its website, and serves more than 3 million active users and an average of 1.
AI offers a lot of promise, and people don't want a faceless tech company to restrict their access to that potential. And if they can preserve their privacy while they use AI models however they want, why not? Venice AI , which offers access to more than 200 AI models while allowing users to retain their privacy, is raking it in thanks to that demand.
Just two years in, the company already has more than 850,000 unique visitors to its website, and serves more than 3 million active users and an average of 1. The startup hosts "uncensored," open source models on its own data centers, and routes queries to closed-source models, such as those by OpenAI or Anthropic. All user input is encrypted and unencrypted client-side, and routed through an external proxy before it is processed and returned, with no data stored on Venice's own systems.
It also provides end-to-end encryption on some models, though you have to pay for a subscription to get that feature. The company is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, its CEO Erik Voorhees (pictured above, in the center) told TechCrunch during an exclusive interview. Understandably, investors have flocked to get a piece of that traction.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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