Jesse Proudman
Co-Founder, President & CTO, Venice.ai
Jesse Proudman is a Seattle-based technology entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience founding and scaling startups across cloud computing, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence.
He is co-founder, President and CTO of Venice.ai, a privacy-focused AI platform providing uncensored, open-source AI for text, image, and code generation. In under two years, Venice has scaled to $100M in annualized revenue and over 4 million users, with $65M raised at a $1B valuation.
Previously, Jesse founded three companies with successful exits: Blue Box (pioneered private cloud on OpenStack, scaled as CEO before bringing on a successor and moving to CTO, acquired by IBM in 2015), Strix Leviathan (quantitative crypto trading, acquired by Parataxis Capital in 2025), and Makara (the first SEC-registered crypto robo-advisor, acquired by Betterment in 2022). After the Blue Box acquisition, he joined IBM as a Distinguished Engineer, leading blockchain and cryptocurrency initiatives. He was named GeekWire's Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014.