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 chatbot application developed by Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has topped the download charts on Apple and Google app stores this week, sparking questions from Wall Street and the tech industry about the sustainability of the U.S. The company is supported by quantitative fund Huanfang Quantitative and uses efficient computing technology to train AI models.
Former Yahoo CEO Closes Sunshine to Join Newly Founded AI Company Dazzle
The Microsoft 365 Copilot app empowers your employees to do their best work with Copilot in the apps they use daily. We cut through the noise – filtering, ranking and summarizing the most important AI news, breakthroughs and research daily. Google has updated its AI Mode in Search with new visual capabilities and improved shopping features.
AI note-taking app Granola adds a repeatable prompts feature
The software maker has also been adding a bunch of AI features to Windows 11 in recent months, including a Copilot Vision tool and an AI-powered Settings agent. This the first major Windows reorg since Davuluri was promoted to Windows and Surface chief more than a year ago. The changes mean the leaders of the Windows teams for Core OS, Data Intelligence and Fundamentals, Security, and Engineering Systems all now report up to Davuluri.
The news was first reported by Wired, which cited an email sent to Sunshine’s shareholders. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made a major decision, deciding to shut down her consumer software company Sunshine and sell its assets to the newly established AI startup Dazzle. Dazzle aims to develop an intelligent personal assistant, and all employees of Sunshine will transfer to the company to continue working. 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. Sunshine, originally launched as a platform for managing personal contacts and automating mundane tasks, struggled to gain significant traction in a crowded market dominated by established players.
OpenAI reports a 16% increase in revenue for the first half of 2025, reaching $4.3 billion. The company’s significant cash burn of $2.5 billion highlights its focus on AI research and development, including ChatGPT operations. While specific details regarding Dazzle’s focus weren’t disclosed, insiders suggest that Mayer is envisioning it as a new kind of AI personal assistant. Current expectations also point to Sunshine’s approximately 15 employees transitioning to roles within Dazzle.
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. Prior to becoming CEO of Yahoo, Mayer had a storied career at Google, where she was employee number 20. 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.
Mayer’s strategy may inspire other founders facing similar crossroads, emphasizing asset redeployment over outright failure. The company had raised about $20 million in 2020, and according to Meyer, was largely self-funded. Explore learning tools to collaborate on projects together and independently, all in one place.
Anthropic Plans Global Expansion: International Staff Will Double, Focusing on the Artificial Intelligence Market
Despite Mayer’s high-profile background and initial buzz, the company encountered rocky years, including pivots in product focus and difficulties in scaling user adoption. 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. 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. According to a report from TechCrunch, the closure and sale were first detailed in an email cited by Wired, highlighting Mayer’s intent to consolidate resources under Dazzle, which she recently incorporated. This new entity aims to build on Sunshine’s AI foundations, potentially focusing on more advanced applications in consumer AI. Sunshine, the AI startup co-founded by Marissa Mayer in 2018, is dissolving after facing several challenges over the years.
Post-Yahoo, she co-founded Sunshine (initially under the name Lumi Labs) with ambitions to revolutionize everyday digital interactions, such as photo-sharing and event planning. Mayer’s journey with Sunshine began when she founded it, initially named Lumi Labs, following her tenure at Yahoo, where she led a significant turnaround effort. Prior to her time at Yahoo, Mayer was a prominent figure at Google, contributing to pivotal projects like Google Search and Google Maps. During the first few waves of layoffs this year, Microsoft’s enormous financial success was the unmentioned elephant in the room. CEO Satya Nadella addressed that in July, after more than 15,000 employees were let go, acknowledging the “uncertainty and seeming incongruence” between historical success and massive job cuts. The layoffs are separate from previous announcements, and the companywide impact was small, according to a Microsoft spokesperson.
Google Enhances AI Mode with Visual Search and Shopping Features
- Windows chief Pavan Davuluri, who was just promoted to president of Windows and devices earlier this month, shared the changes to Microsoft’s Windows teams in an internal memo.
- 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.
- Insiders speculate that Dazzle could target enterprise-level AI solutions or enhanced consumer tools, building on Sunshine’s intellectual property like its contact management algorithms.
- With Monday’s layoffs, disclosed in a state regulatory filing, the number of Washington-based workers affected has passed 3,200.
Compared to its vegas casino app download apk predecessor, this model surpasses top models such as GPT-5, Gemini, and Claude4 in multiple benchmark tests, achieving a technological breakthrough. The Bai Ling team at Ant Group has open-sourced two efficient thinking models, Ring-flash-linear-2.0 and Ring-mini-linear-2.0, designed to enhance deep reasoning efficiency. They also released FP8 fusion operators and linear Attention inference fusion operators, supporting efficient inference with ‘large parameters and low activation’ and ultra-long context. By optimizing the architecture and collaborating with high-performance operators, significant performance improvements have been achieved.
It was called Shine, and it was a way to share photos with a group of people who were at the same event. 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. Sunshine, the consumer AI startup founded by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in 2018, has seen brighter days. Microsoft recently created the Windows AI Labs program to trial experimental artificial intelligence features inside Windows 11.
Facing an increasingly competitive AI market, Dazzle hopes to achieve breakthroughs in the smart assistant field by integrating existing technologies and teams. With the rapid development of AI technology, Dazzle’s future has attracted widespread attention and expectations. While details remain sparse, IT Magazine reports that the sale is seen as a way to preserve value from Sunshine’s assets, which include proprietary AI technologies developed over the years. Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic plans to significantly expand its international team by 2025, doubling the size of its workforce and increasing its AI applications team fivefold. This move aims to enhance competitiveness in overseas markets and address challenges from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. With a surge in demand for the Claude series of models, nearly 80% of usage comes from outside the United States, with South Korea being particularly notable.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings together your favorite apps in one intuitive platform that keeps your data secure with enterprise data protection. Spark creativity and collaboration in any learning environment with a variety of Microsoft 365 apps and free templates to choose from. Anyone in your organization can quickly create documents, presentations, and worksheets within a single, unified app experience. Empower your organization with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat that supercharges productivity, sparks creativity, and keeps your data protected with enterprise data protection. The Moondream3.0 preview version uses an efficient mixture of experts architecture, activating only 200 million parameters, with a total parameter count of 900 million, demonstrating excellent visual reasoning.
This update allows users to receive image-based responses and shop more intuitively using natural language queries. As the tech sector continues to grapple with economic uncertainties, such transitions could become more common, allowing seasoned executives like Mayer to adapt and thrive in new ventures. Mayer’s career trajectory has been nothing short of illustrious, from her early days as Google’s 20th employee and first female engineer to her tumultuous tenure at Yahoo, where she oversaw its sale to Verizon in 2017.
- Post-Yahoo, she co-founded Sunshine (initially under the name Lumi Labs) with ambitions to revolutionize everyday digital interactions, such as photo-sharing and event planning.
- In 2024, the service added event management and photo sharing — with a touch of AI, of course — but with little success.
- 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.
- This maneuver allows Mayer to streamline operations without the baggage of Sunshine’s past struggles, positioning Dazzle as a fresh start in the burgeoning AI field.
- Despite launching a new activity management and photo sharing app with AI features in 2024, Sunshine still failed to gain market recognition, with the app having just over a thousand downloads on the Google Play Store.
- The news was first reported by Wired, which cited an email sent to Sunshine’s shareholders.
Austin, Texas-based cloud computing giant Oracle, which has an engineering hub in the Seattle area, laid off more than 260 Seattle-area employees this summer as part of companywide cuts. Create equitable learning environments that help students develop knowledge with familiar apps essential to both academic and future career success. 🌟 Marissa Mayer closed the Sunshine company, transferring its assets to the newly founded AI company Dazzle. 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. Mayer founded Sunshine, originally called Lumi Labs, in 2018 after her five-year turnaround attempt at Yahoo.
OpenAI’s Sora 2: A New AI-Powered Video App Challenging Social Media Norms
👥 Dazzle plans to develop an intelligent personal assistant, and former Sunshine employees will join the new company. Sunshine raised about $20 million in 2020, but according to Mayer herself, the company mainly relied on its own funds for operations. With this asset sale and team integration, Sunshine will officially exit the market, and the new AI company Dazzle will take over its talent and business, entering a new phase in the smart assistant field.
Microsoft layoffs continue into 5th consecutive month
The company’s assets will be sold to a new AI entity called Dazzle, which Mayer has recently established. The announcement was communicated to shareholders via email on September 17, revealing that Dazzle has been officially incorporated and is prepared to take over Sunshine’s holdings. In 2018, when former Windows chief Terry Myerson left Microsoft, the company split up Windows into two teams, with the core of the Windows platform team moving to the Azure side and the client parts of Windows moving to a new Experiences & Devices team. Mayer’s decision not only marks the end of Sunshine, but also lays the foundation for Dazzle’s future development.
Sunshine’s initial product, Sunshine Contacts, aimed to assist users in managing their contacts with AI technology. However, the app faced scrutiny regarding user privacy concerns, particularly due to its practices of merging duplicate contacts and potentially pulling in personal data from sources like Whitepages without user consent. In 2024, the company also launched a photo-sharing app called Shine, but it did not perform well in the market. The sale requires approval from shareholders, including well-known venture capital firms and co-founder Enrique Muñoz Torres. Reports indicate that nearly all shareholders, 99%, have already consented to the transaction.
It also means that most of the engineering work for Windows is now under a single division leader, rather than shared with Microsoft’s Azure teams. Microsoft is bringing its key Windows engineering teams under a single organization again, as part of a reorg being announced today. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri, who was just promoted to president of Windows and devices earlier this month, shared the changes to Microsoft’s Windows teams in an internal memo.
As the largest shareholder, Mayer expressed optimism in the email, stating that this transition represents the optimal path forward to leverage Sunshine’s accumulated momentum. In a move that underscores the volatile nature of the tech startup world, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is shuttering her consumer software venture, Sunshine, and transferring its assets to a newly formed AI company called Dazzle. This decision, revealed through an email to shareholders, marks the end of a seven-year journey for Sunshine, which has faced numerous challenges since its inception in 2018. 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. By that point, the startup had raised $20 million in venture capital funding, in addition to Mayer’s personal contributions. 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.