Dazzle

Dazzle is an AI personal-assistant startup founded by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. It builds an assistant that learns about a user from their photos rather than from email or calendars, and is reachable by iMessage and text, an iOS app and the web.

Dazzle grew out of Sunshine, Mayer's earlier photo-sharing and contact-management startup. TechCrunch reported in December 2025 that Mayer shut Sunshine down, that its team began prototyping Dazzle in summer 2025, and that Sunshine's investors received 10% of Dazzle's equity. The company raised an $8 million seed round at a $35 million valuation, led by Forerunner's Kirsten Green, with Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures and Bling Capital also named as investors, and Mayer investing her own money.

Dazzle launched on 29 September 2026 with a post titled "Announcing Dazzle: Pictures, Not Prompts"; access was invite-only, and an MCP connection lets its photo intelligence work inside Claude, Codex and OpenClaw. In late October 2026 the company drew backlash after Mayer told the New York Times she had used Dazzle to produce three bullet points describing her nine-year-old daughter for a school request, and critics also raised privacy questions about an assistant that reads personal photos. Mayer replied that she was testing the product on a hard question, not deciding to outsource parenting.