The crisis of counterfeit products cuts two ways. Luxury brands lose more than 30 billion dollars a year in imitations, while buyers are booming Second-hand market $210 billion they have no reliable way to verify that what they are buying is genuine. Veritas wants to solve both problems with a solution that combines custom hardware and software.
The startup claims to have developed a “waterproof” chip that cannot be bypassed by devices such as Flipper Zero, a widely available hacking tool that can be used to breach wireless systems. These chips are linked to digital certificates to verify the authenticity of the products.
Veritas founder Luci Holland has experienced life as both a technologist and an artist. He has worked in a variety of artistic mediums, including mixed media painting and metal sculpture. He has also worked at Tesla as a technical director of products and has held several business development, community development and product management roles at technology companies and venture capital.
Holland noted that traditionally, luxury goods manufacturers have used various symbols or physical marks to authenticate their products. However, with the increasing demand for these products, counterfeiters have learned to create convincing copies of these marks along with fake high-quality certificates. These goods are often called “super fake.”
Holland said she spoke with maisons — established luxury fashion houses — who said some of their locations had to stop authenticating products because fakes became too convincing to reliably detect. She said drawing on her experience in both the tech world and the art world, she wanted to solve the problem.
“For me, as someone who has a background as a designer and then also has a background in technology, I saw this problem and thought about the different ways we could solve it. I think what’s really innovative is that we used and combined elements from both hardware and software to create this solution that helps protect brands in this way to convey information,” he said.
“When I think about counterfeiting and I think about the most iconic and legacy brands,” he added, “a lot of these brands have been around for over 100, 150 years. These brands deserve the most advanced protection to protect those designs.”
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Veritas worked with different designers to create a chip that is minimally disruptive to the product creation process. The chip is the size of a small gem and can easily be inserted even after a product is manufactured without compromising its integrity. The chip incorporates NFC, or Near Field Communication — the same short-range wireless technology used in contactless payments. This means you can tap your smartphone on the item to verify its authenticity.
Holland said that for safety reasons, the startup developed a custom coil and bridge structure. If someone attempts to tamper with the product, the chip goes dormant and hides the codes associated with the product. On the software side, product information is linked to the Veritas backend, which tracks scanning behavior to prevent fraud. The company is also creating a blockchain-based digital clone of the product for potential digital art gallery exhibitions or conversion activities.
The company didn’t reveal who it’s working with, but said brands can use its software suite to get information about all branded products, add team members to manage items and add product information along with product history — details that can also be used to connect with their community. The startup said some partners use it to attract customers through exclusive invitations or early access to new products.
While the counterfeiting market is large, Holland believes the market still needs education on why it needs strong technological solutions.
“It’s shocking to see that some of the off-the-shelf solutions, like the NFC chips that brands use, are really that vulnerable and could be easily bypassed. That’s the one thing that most people don’t know, and we want to educate the ecosystem to adopt more secure solutions,” Holland said.
Veritas said it raised $1.75 million in pre-seed funding led by Seven Seven Six, along with DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang, Reys skincare brand co-founder Gloria Zhu and former TechCrunch editor Josh Constine. The company plans to use the funding to expand its two-person team.
Alexis Ohanian of Seven Seven Six said he was impressed by Holland’s combination of design taste and expertise. He believes that brands know that counterfeit products are a problem and are constantly looking for strong solutions.
“It is absolutely an arms race [against fake goods makers]but we’re used to fighting and winning all the time in technology — and luxury brands need all the help they can get,” Ohanian said.
