Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer secured $8 million in seed funding for her new AI startup, Dazzle AI. The seed round brings startup valuation to $35 million.
Kirsten Green (of Forerunner Ventures), a venture capitalist, led the investment round with participation from well-known VC firms, including Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft, Offline Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Bling Capital.
With fresh funds, Dazzle AI plans to expand its team and prepare for its next generation AI personal assistant product in the coming months.
“Throughout my career, I’ve loved making complex technology more intuitive,” said Marissa Mayer, Founder and CEO of Dazzle AI. “With Dazzle, our goal is to make artificial intelligence feel simple, helping people get more done and delighting them along the way. Now that foundational models have reached a level of consistent excellence, they’ve become a reliable infrastructure. The new frontier is applications—leveraging that power to create real, tangible value.”
According to our latest Startup Funding News tracker, artificial intelligence is the hottest investment destination for global investment firms in 2026. More recently, Lemon Slice, a provider of an Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform that allows users to create interactive video avatars from a single photo, raised $10.5 million in Seed funding to officially launch its product, Lemon Slice-2, a real-time AI avatar model that turns any image into a live, conversational video call. In another deal, BriefCatch, a provider of Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled writing assistance for legal professionals, raises $6 million in Series A funding led by Full In, a software-focused growth equity firm.