Good morning! Best Buy CEO Corie Barry says Trump's tariffs will raise electronics prices, Disney agrees to a $43.3 million settlement for a gender discrimination lawsuit, and Arcade AI's multibillion-dollar idea starts with jewelry.
- Jewel tones. So much of the AI boom is male-dominated, from the $19 billion raised last quarter alone to a gender gap in who has free time to fiddle with new technologies. So it's novel to see a startup doing something unique in the AI space—that is not just woman-led, but unabashedly using a stereotypically female category as a launching pad for new technology.
Mariam Naficy cofounded Arcade AI, which bills itself as the "first-ever AI product creation platform." Right now, that means you can use AI to make jewelry. Users can enter a descriptor for a piece of jewelry they want—like "ladybug earrings" or "silver necklace with a mountain pendant"—and Arcade uses AI to design that piece, and then sends it to a manufacturer who actually produces the product. The platform requires a complex mix of AI determining the design, the price, and who would make the product. "This is not search-and-retrieval AI," Naficy says. "This is 100% new product generated."
The startup has raised $17 million from investors including Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures, Offline Ventures, Reid Hoffman, and Karlie Kloss. Naficy's vision is to start with jewelry and then build a much bigger business. "We have a shot to build the first AI marketplace—a multibillion-dollar destination," she says. Naficy sees several paths forward: celebrities and influencers using AI to create lines of merch, earning commission on sales of their designs; fashion editors and costume designers creating their dream products; other jewelry businesses seeking data on user behavior; and major corporations licensing Arcade's technology. Plus, the one in which Arcade makes it all the way as an independent company.
Naficy is best known as the founder of Minted, the stationery and art printing platform. She says that over her career she's "focused entirely on the ‘extras’"—or aesthetic categories like jewelry and art, rather than staples—and saw jewelry as a way to show the power of what an AI product creation platform could do. Tackling a 3D product first would make categories like art and cards easier later. "Jewelry is a very large market. It's fragmented. There's room for personalization," she says. "And we thought it was much more viral. It would spread faster."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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