Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, is not sitting on the sidelines of the generative AI revolution. After spending six years running Sunshine, a photo-sharing and contact-management startup with limited success, the storied tech leader has closed that company to launch a new venture named Dazzle. This new startup is focused on building the next generation of AI personal assistants.
While Mayer is not yet sharing specific details about Dazzle’s functionality, she has revealed that the company has raised an eight million dollar seed round at a thirty-five million dollar valuation. The round was led by Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Bling Capital. Mayer admitted to investing her own capital but emphasized that Green led the round. Green is a venture capitalist with a record of identifying iconic consumer brands like Warby Parker, Chime, and Dollar Shave Club.
Green’s investment suggests Dazzle is positioned for the coming wave of new AI-infused consumer businesses. The founder of Forerunner Ventures has previously stated that while enterprise AI took an early lead, consumer-facing AI is a late bloomer finally ready for its breakout. Landing Green as a lead investor is a significant stamp of credibility for Dazzle, especially following the widespread perception that Sunshine was a flop.
Mayer said the Sunshine team began prototyping Dazzle last summer, a project that quickly eclipsed their previous work in both ambition and opportunity. She noted they realized this was something they were much more excited about, with potential for a much bigger impact than what Sunshine was building.
Sunshine was originally founded as Lumi Labs in 2018. It first launched with a subscription app for contact management called Sunshine Contacts. Despite Mayer’s high profile, the product struggled to gain traction. Privacy advocates raised alarms over the app’s practice of pulling home addresses from public databases to enrich contact lists, and the company never recovered from the initial skepticism.
By 2024, the company broadened its offering by adding event management and an AI-powered photo-sharing tool called Shine. This new offering was widely criticized for its outdated design and similarly failed to attract widespread usage.
Sunshine raised a total of twenty million dollars from investors including Felicis, Norwest Venture Partners, and Unusual Ventures. When the company was dissolved, those investors received ten percent of Dazzle’s equity.
Reflecting on Sunshine’s struggle, Mayer was candid about its limitations. She admitted the problems the company tackled were too mundane and not large enough, adding that she did not believe they achieved the overall polish and accessibility she wanted.
Mayer is now betting that the lessons from Sunshine will help her build a more resilient and impactful business with Dazzle. Before her tenure as Yahoo CEO, Mayer was employee number twenty at Google, where she helped design the look and feel of Google search and oversaw the development of Google Maps and AdWords.
Mayer stated she has had the rare privilege of being at two companies that really changed how people do things, citing Yahoo as defining the internet for many and Google changing everything with Search and Maps. She aspires to build a product with that kind of impact again.
Dazzle is expected to come out of stealth mode early next year. Its website is currently password-protected, blocking public access.