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."
