# Venice vs Inception

> Venice puts 370+ open and closed models behind a privacy-first API. Inception sells its own fast diffusion models.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/venice-vs-inception · By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 11, 2026

## How they compare

Venice offers GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4 and its own uncensored fine-tunes under zero data retention, with TEE or end-to-end encryption on some models, plus proxied closed models at a markup. Credits come in USD, crypto or DIEM staking. Inception sells closed Mercury diffusion models that refine a block of tokens in parallel instead of one at a time. Mercury 2.5 is a reasoning model with tool use and 260K context at $0.20 in and $0.75 out per million tokens; Inception reports over 1,100 tokens per second, and Artificial Analysis measures about 640.

Venice suits teams that want broad model choice, private inference or uncensored models. Inception suits teams that need fast output and can work within a single model family.

## What each one does

### Venice

Venice is a privacy-focused AI platform founded in 2024 by Erik Voorhees, the crypto entrepreneur behind ShapeShift. It pairs a consumer chat app with a developer API that works as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI's chat endpoint and covers text, image, audio and video across 370+ models. Open models such as GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4 and Venice's own uncensored fine-tunes run under a private tier with contract-enforced zero data retention, and some add TEE inference or end-to-end encryption, where only an attested enclave can decrypt the prompt. Closed models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are proxied under an anonymized tier that hides user identity but leaves prompt content visible to the upstream provider.

### Inception

Inception builds diffusion large language models (dLLMs). Every other LLM on this list generates text one token at a time; Inception's Mercury models start from a rough draft of a whole block and refine it over a few passes, producing many tokens in parallel. That ties speed less to output length and lets the models run fast on ordinary NVIDIA GPUs rather than custom chips. The company was founded by professors from Stanford, UCLA and Cornell behind core work on diffusion, Flash Attention and DPO, and is led by Stanford's Stefano Ermon. It raised a $50M seed in November 2025 led by Menlo Ventures, with Mayfield, M12, NVentures, Snowflake and Databricks, plus Andrew Ng and Andrej Karpathy as angels.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Venice for

- Uncensored open models
- Zero-retention and TEE inference
- Many models across text, image, audio and video

### Choose Inception for

- Very fast output on standard GPUs
- Cheap reasoning with tool use and 260K context
- Buying through AWS Bedrock or Azure

## At a glance

| Attribute | Venice | Inception |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, plus proxied closed models | Closed weights (Mercury dLLMs) |
| Flagship models | GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4 Pro | Mercury 2.5, Mercury 2 |
| Speed | - | 1,100+ tok/s (vendor); ~640 measured |
| Price | $0.06–$12 in, $0.28–$60 out per 1M; DIEM staking | $0.20 in, $0.75 out (Mercury 2.5) |
| Customization | - | Fine-tuning on request |
| Deployment | Serverless API, consumer app | Serverless API, Bedrock, Azure, private |
| Long context | 1M on most current models | 260K |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Venice and Inception?

Venice puts 370+ open and closed models behind a privacy-first API. Inception sells its own fast diffusion models.

### When should I choose Venice over Inception?

Uncensored open models; Zero-retention and TEE inference; Many models across text, image, audio and video.

### When should I choose Inception over Venice?

Very fast output on standard GPUs; Cheap reasoning with tool use and 260K context; Buying through AWS Bedrock or Azure.

### Is Venice or Inception cheaper?

Venice: $0.06–$12 in, $0.28–$60 out per 1M; DIEM staking. Inception: $0.20 in, $0.75 out (Mercury 2.5). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

### Which has more context, Venice or Inception?

Venice: 1M on most current models. Inception: 260K.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Venice](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-venice.md), [Subconscious vs Inception](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-inception.md).

Full profiles: [Venice](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/venice.md), [Inception](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/inception.md).