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Marissa Mayer’s new startup Dazzle raises $8M led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green – TechCrunch

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Marissa Mayer’s new startup Dazzle raises $8M led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green

By Marina Temkin, 8:48 AM PST · December 23, 2025

The former Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, refuses to sit on the sidelines of the generative AI revolution.

After spending the last six years running Sunshine, a photo-sharing and contact-management startup with little success, the storied tech leader has shuttered the company to launch Dazzle, a new startup focused on building the next generation of AI personal assistants.

While Mayer is not yet sharing specifics about Dazzle’s functionality, she has revealed that the new company has raised an $8 million seed round at a $35 million valuation. The round was led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Bling Capital. Although Mayer has admitted to investing her own capital in the startup, she emphasized that the round was led by Green, a venture capitalist with a storied record of identifying iconic consumer brands such as Warby Parker, Chime, and Dollar Shave Club.

Green’s investment suggests Dazzle is poised for the coming wave of new AI-infused consumer businesses. The founder of Forerunner Ventures previously told TechCrunch that while enterprise AI took the early lead in this tech cycle, consumer-facing AI is a “late bloomer” that’s finally ready for its breakout.

Even for a founder of Mayer’s fame, landing Green as a lead investor is a significant stamp of credibility for Dazzle, especially after Sunshine was widely considered to be a flop. “I think she really has a great sense for where people and platforms are going,” Mayer said.  

Mayer told TechCrunch that the Sunshine team began prototyping Dazzle last summer, a project that quickly eclipsed their previous work in ambition and opportunity. “We realized that this was something that we were much more excited about,” she said, noting that Dazzle has potential for “a much bigger impact” than what Sunshine was building.

Originally founded as Lumi Labs in 2018, Sunshine first launched with a subscription app for contact management dubbed “Sunshine Contacts.”

Despite its founder’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 “Shine,” an AI-powered photo-sharing tool. The new offering was widely criticized for its outdated design and similarly failed to attract widespread usage.

Continue/Read Original Article: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/23/marissa-mayers-new-startup-dazzle-raises-8m-led-by-forerunners-kirsten-green/

@moppi
Für den Straßengebrauch wäre das dann sowas:
https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle
Ich glaube, einige haben ihre #KI #Gesichtserkennung drauf trainiert. Weiß aber nicht mehr, wo ich das gelesen hab.
#Tarnung #Dazzle
@HonkHase

Ultimate Muscle The Kinnikuman Legacy The Path of the Superhero & Legends vs New Generation with SerpyMatt

Strap on your meat-based wrestling tights and oil up those biceps because Play Comics is about to suplex you straight into the absurdly wonderful world of Kinnikuman! This week we’re tag-teaming not one, but TWO Ultimate Muscle games—The Path of the Superhero for GameCube and Legends vs New Generation for Game Boy Advance. That’s right, we’re going double or nothing like a Choujin who forgot leg day exists and decided to compensate with twice the spandex.

These games, spawned from the legendary Kinnikuman manga and anime, brought us a universe where wrestling isn’t just a sport—it’s the entire basis of intergalactic civilization, which honestly makes about as much sense as any other comic book logic we’ve tackled on this show. Whether you’re commanding Kid Muscle through his heroic quest to not embarrass his legendary father or settling the age-old debate of who would win between old-school wrestlers and the new generation (spoiler: everyone’s finishing move is magnificently ridiculous), we’ve got you covered.

Joining us for this muscle-bound mayhem is none other than SerpyMatt, who hasn’t quite gotten around to launching his own podcast yet—but he’s told me the concept and folks, when it finally drops, you’re going to absolutely love it. Assuming he ever stops procrastinating long enough to record episode one, that is.

So crack your knuckles, practice your most intimidating wrestler growl, and prepare for an episode that’s guaranteed to have more body slams than a physics textbook thrown at a trampoline factory. It’s time to find out if these games captured the magnificent weirdness of their source material or if they just left us feeling like we got hit with the Kinniku Buster of disappointment.

Learn such things as:

• What happens when you give character designers unlimited freedom and a fever dream?
• What’s the exchange rate between friendship power and actual wrestling skill?
• Should we be concerned that intergalactic peace depends entirely on entertainment wrestling?
• And so much more!

You can find SerpyMatt on BlueSky @serpymatt.bsky.social.

If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicscaston Twitter and in the Play Comics Podcast Fan Groupon Facebook.

A big thanks to the Byrds Eye View Comics and The Last Comic Shop for the promos today.

Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, whose wrestling gimmick here would probably be something based around weaponizing VHS tapes.

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