Jesse Proudman is Co-Founder, President, and CTO at Venice AI, a privacy-focused AI platform offering unrestricted access to over 200 open-source and commercial AI models without logging or storing user data.

A lifelong Pacific Northwest entrepreneur who started his first company at age 13, Jesse holds a BA in Business Leadership from the University of Puget Sound and completed the Entrepreneurial Masters Program at MIT through the Entrepreneurs Organization.

Jesse champions AI privacy as a foundational right, arguing that centralizing sensitive user prompts in corporate databases creates an unacceptable risk of breaches, government subpoenas, and policy changes that can expose personal data.

Over a 25-plus year career, Jesse founded cloud computing company Blue Box Group (acquired by IBM in 2015), co-founded crypto trading startup Strix Leviathan (acquired by Parataxis in 2025), and spun out Makara, which was acquired by Betterment in 2022, where he then served as VP for three years.

Venice AI reached 3.5 million registered users and profitability within its first two years, processing 1.3 trillion tokens per month, and raised a $65M Series A at a $1 billion valuation led by Dragonfly Capital.