Venice AI, the privacy-focused artificial intelligence startup founded by crypto entrepreneur Erik Voorhees, has raised $65 million in a Series A funding round.
Dragonfly led the round, with participation from North Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, Archetype, Liquid2 Ventures, Morgan Creek and others, Venice said Wednesday. This is Venice's first round of outside capital, valuing the startup's equity at $1 billion, Voorhees said in an X thread.
In return for the $65 million investment, Series A investors received an 8.98% equity stake in Venice AI, a vesting grant of 1.5 million Venice (VVV) tokens, and warrants giving them the right to purchase another 5 million VVV tokens during the next eight years, Voorhees said.
Investors must pay Venice about $66.5 million if they exercise those warrants, which would increase the total capital raised to about $131.5 million. Both the token grant and warrants are locked for one year before vesting linearly over the following three years, Voorhees said.
What is Venice AI
