Marissa Mayer Shuts Down Sunshine, Launches New AI Startup Dazzle

Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup | TechCrunch

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer is closing the doors on her consumer software startup Sunshine, and is selling the company's assets to her new AI startup, Dazzle. The news was first reported by Wired, which cited an email sent to Sunshine's shareholders. Dazzle is setting out to build an AI personal assistant, the report cited anonymous sources as saying, and added that all of Sunshine's employees will move to the new company. Almost all of Sunshine's investors, who include Norwest Venture Partners, Felicis Partners, and SV Angel, have signed off on the deal, Wired cited the sources as saying. Originally founded in 2018, Sunshine first launched with a subscription app for contact management, dubbed "Sunshine Contacts." That product saw little adoption due to privacy concerns about privacy, and pretty much languished. In 2024, the service added event management and photo sharing -- with a touch of AI, of course -- but with little success. Both apps have been downloaded just over 1,000 times on the Google Play Store.) The company had raised about $20 million in 2020, and according to Meyer, was largely self-funded.

Marissa Mayer Is Dissolving Her Sunshine Startup Lab

Sunshine, the consumer AI startup founded by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in 2018, has seen brighter days. The small startup is shutting down and its assets are being sold to a new entity incorporated by Mayer, called Dazzle, according to an email viewed by WIRED. Mayer sent the email to Sunshine shareholders on September 17, informing them that Dazzle has officially incorporated and is ready to acquire Sunshine's holdings. The deal requires approval from shareholders, including Sunshine cofounder Enrique Muñoz Torres, Norwest Venture Partners, Felicis Partners, Ron Conway's SV Angel, the PR firm Archetype Agency, and others. As of Sunday afternoon, 99 percent of shareholders had signed, according to sources close to the situation. Mayer herself is the company's largest shareholder and investor. The email did not elaborate on what Dazzle's purpose will be, but sources tell WIRED that Mayer is eyeing a new kind of AI personal assistant. Sunshine's roughly 15 employees are expecting to find new roles at Dazzle, sources say. "After careful consideration, Sunshine's management, and 99.99% of its shareholders, determined the strongest path forward for the company was to sell to Dazzle AI, a new company already incorporated and with committed funding," Mayer said through a spokesperson. "As Sunshine's largest investor, shareholder, and CEO, Marissa is proud of what the team built and looks forward to carrying that momentum into new opportunities around Dazzle." Mayer founded Sunshine, originally called Lumi Labs, back in 2018 after her five-year turnaround attempt at Yahoo. Prior to becoming CEO of Yahoo, Mayer had a storied career at Google, where she was employee number 20. Mayer designed the interface for Google Search, and helped develop Google Maps and Google AdWords. The idea for Sunshine's first product, an app for managing contacts, stemmed from Mayer's own experience tapping into her deep network of Silicon Valley luminaries as she was trying to launch her company. That app, Sunshine Contacts, launched in 2020. By that point, the startup had raised $20 million in venture capital funding, in addition to Mayer's personal contributions. Early on, the Sunshine app was plagued by complaints that it potentially violated user privacy. The app, which used AI to identify and merge duplicate people in your phone's contacts list, was also pulling in information from Whitepages to automatically add home addresses to contacts. In 2024, Sunshine launched a photo sharing app called Shine. Like Sunshine Contacts, Shine was widely viewed as a flop.