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

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer refuses to sit on the sidelines of the generative AI revolution.

After running for the past six years Sunshinea photo sharing and contact management startup with little success, has the legendary technology leader Closed the company will launch Dazzle, a new startup focused on building the next generation of AI personal assistants.

While Mayer isn’t sharing any details about Dazzle’s functionality yet, she revealed that the company has raised an $8 million seed round at a $35 million valuation. The round was led by Kirsten Green of Forerunner, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures and Bling Capital. While 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 track record of identifying iconic consumer brands such as Warby Parker, Chime and Dollar Shave Club.

Green’s investment suggests Dazzle is ready for the coming wave of new AI-infused consumer companies. The founder of Forerunner Ventures previously told TechCrunch that while enterprise AI has been at the forefront of this technology cycle, consumer-facing AI is a “late bloomer” that is finally ready for its breakthrough.

Even for a founder of Mayer’s fame, landing Green as a lead investor is an important stamp of credibility for Dazzle, especially after Sunshine was widely considered a flop.

“I think she really has a good sense of 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 this was something we were much more excited about,” she said, noting that Dazzle has the potential for “a much bigger impact” than what Sunshine was building.

Sunshine was originally founded as Lumi Labs in 2018 and first launched with a subscription contact management app called ‘Sunshine Contacts’. Despite the founder’s high profile, the product struggled to gain traction. Privacy advocates have raised alarms about the app practice of collecting home addresses of public databases to enrich contact lists, and the company never recovered from its initial skepticism.

In 2024, the company expanded its offering add event management and ‘Shine’, an AI-powered photo sharing tool. The new offering was widely criticized for its outdated design and also failed to achieve widespread adoption.

Sunshine has raised a total of $20 million from investors including Felicis, Norwest Venture Partners and Unusual Ventures. When the company was dissolved, investors received 10% of Dazzle’s equity, Mayer said.

Reflecting on Sunshine’s struggles, Mayer was candid about its limitations, admitting that the problems the company tackled were too « mundane » and not big enough. “I don’t think we got it to the state of overall sophistication and accessibility that I really wanted,” she added.

Mayer is now betting that Sunshine’s lessons will help her build a much more resilient and impactful company with Dazzle.

Before her tenure as CEO of Yahoo, Mayer was employee number 20 at Google, where she helped design the look and feel of Google Search and oversaw the development of Google Maps and AdWords.

“I’ve had the rare privilege of working at two companies that really changed the way people do things,” Mayer told TechCrunch. “Yahoo defined the Internet for many. Google, in Search and Maps, changed everything. I really strive to build a product that has that kind of impact again.”

Dazzle is expected to come out of stealth mode early next year. The dazzle.ai website is currently password protected, blocking public access.