Marissa Mayer Is Dissolving Her Sunshine Startup Lab

Sunshine, nan consumer AI startup founded by erstwhile Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer successful 2018, has seen brighter days.

The mini startup is shutting down, and its assets are being sold to a caller entity incorporated by Mayer called Dazzle, according to an email viewed by WIRED. Mayer sent nan email to Sunshine shareholders connected September 17, informing them that Dazzle has officially incorporated and is fresh to get Sunshine’s holdings.

The woody requires support from shareholders, including Sunshine cofounder Enrique Muñoz Torres, Norwest Venture Partners, Felicis Partners, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, nan PR patient Archetype Agency, and others. As of Sunday afternoon, 99 percent of shareholders had signed, according to sources adjacent to nan situation. Mayer is nan company's largest shareholder and investor.

The email did not elaborate connected what Dazzle’s intent will be, but sources show WIRED that Mayer is eyeing a caller benignant of AI individual assistant. Sunshine’s astir 15 labor are expecting to find caller roles astatine Dazzle, sources say.

“After observant consideration, Sunshine’s management, and 99.99% of its shareholders, wished nan strongest way guardant for nan institution was to waste to Dazzle AI, a caller institution already incorporated and pinch committed funding,” Mayer said done a spokesperson. “As Sunshine’s largest investor, shareholder, and CEO, Marissa is proud of what nan squad built and looks guardant to carrying that momentum into caller opportunities astir Dazzle.”

Mayer founded Sunshine, primitively called Lumi Labs, successful 2018 aft her five-year turnaround effort astatine Yahoo. Prior to becoming CEO of Yahoo, Mayer had a storied profession astatine Google, wherever she was worker number 20. Mayer designed nan interface for Google Search and helped create Google Maps and Google AdWords.

The thought for Sunshine’s first product, an app for managing contacts, stemmed from Mayer’s ain acquisition tapping into her heavy web of Silicon Valley luminaries arsenic she was trying to motorboat her company. That app, Sunshine Contacts, launched successful 2020. By that point, nan startup had raised $20 cardinal successful task superior funding, successful summation to Mayer’s individual contributions.

Early on, nan Sunshine app was plagued by complaints that it perchance violated personification privacy. The app, which utilized AI to place and merge copy group successful your phone’s contacts list, was besides pulling successful accusation from Whitepages to automatically adhd location addresses to contacts.

In 2024, Sunshine launched a photograph sharing app called Shine. Like Sunshine Contacts, Shine was wide viewed arsenic a flop.