NEAR Protocol: Venice launches verifiably encrypted AI inference on NEAR - 24 Sep 2026

Venice has launched verifiably encrypted AI inference with NEAR Protocol as its chosen chain, offering both Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) models. The release lets users run AI workloads whose privacy guarantees can be verified rather than taken on trust, positioning NEAR as infrastructure for encrypted AI services.The launch gives NEAR a concrete AI-privacy use case, which can support the network's AI-chain thesis among investors. If encrypted inference workloads run on-chain, they could become a recurring source of transaction demand for the token. The scale of that effect depends on adoption, which Venice has not yet quantified, so the near-term impact is a narrative and positioning shift rather than a measured change in network usage.Venice chooses NEAR.