Veritas Expands Anti-Counterfeit Chip to Jewelry, Trophies

Veritas, a startup building embedded authentication chips for physical goods, has released a second-generation chip designed to work on metal surfaces and scan through glass, extending its anti-counterfeiting technology to jewelry, trophies and fragrance bottles, according to founder Luci Holland, speaking to TechCrunch.

What the Chip Does and How It Works

The Veritas chip is designed to be inserted into a product without damaging it, then used by brands to verify authenticity while customers display a certificate of ownership through the company's app, Holland told TechCrunch. The system is built to resist the kind of copying that undermines simpler verification tools. "Our approach combines secure, authenticated chip responses with integration into the product itself. Our chip generates a secure response with each tap and includes a tamper-detection wire. We make the connection between the object and its digital identity part of the proof," Holland said, according to TechCrunch.

Holland, a former Tesla technical product manager with a design and art background, founded the company to address weaknesses in existing anti-counterfeiting approaches, TechCrunch reported. Static QR codes and standard NFC links can be reproduced through copying, Holland said, which is why Veritas paired its chip hardware with tamper detection built into the physical connection.

Why Brands Need a New Anti-Counterfeit Tool

Fashion houses face a growing problem from counterfeiters who have gotten better at replicating brand marks and passing off so-called "superfakes" as genuine merchandise, TechCrunch reported. The second-generation chip is built to meet that challenge across a wider range of materials. "The next-generation chip is ready for production and supports a broader range of applications, including jewelry, trophies, hard-surface products, and glass objects such as fragrance bottles," Holland said, per TechCrunch. "Alongside our garment integrations, this gives brands more ways to incorporate authentication directly into their products."

Which Partnerships Prove the Concept

Veritas this week announced a partnership with ATHLOS, a women's track-and-field competition founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who is also an investor in Veritas, according to TechCrunch. All 18 ATHLOS championship crowns will include Veritas chips so their authenticity can be verified, TechCrunch reported.

The company has also embedded a chip into a pair of LeBron James's first Nike shoes, reimagined by artist Adam Port, TechCrunch reported. Tapping a phone to the shoe brings up its history and story, according to the outlet, illustrating how the chip can double as a storytelling tool rather than strictly an anti-fraud measure.

Who Is Funding Veritas

Veritas has raised $1.75 million in pre-seed funding led by Ohanian's venture firm Seven Seven Six, with participation from DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang, Reys skincare co-founder Gloria Zhu, and former TechCrunch editor Josh Constine, according to TechCrunch. The round closed in February, the outlet reported.

Since that fundraise, the company has shipped a consumer iOS app and a brand portal that lets companies manage product records and build owner experiences, TechCrunch reported. Through those tools, brands can offer services such as member clubs, event check-ins and segmented early access to product drops, according to the outlet.

What Comes Next for Brand Adoption

Veritas competed in this year's TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, which ran Tuesday through Thursday, with a winner announced Thursday, TechCrunch reported. The company's pitch to brands rests on treating the chip not just as a fraud deterrent but as a channel for building direct relationships with product owners, since each verified tap can double as an entry point into a brand's loyalty or community features.

The expansion into metal and glass surfaces addresses categories, jewelry, trophies and fragrance packaging, that had been difficult for earlier authentication hardware to handle, according to TechCrunch. Whether luxury houses and other brands adopt the chip at scale will depend on manufacturing integration costs and whether the tamper-detection design holds up against increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting operations, a question the company's early partnerships with ATHLOS and the Nike shoe project are meant to help answer.

For now, Veritas's bet is that pairing a physical, tamper-evident connection with a verifiable digital record closes a gap that QR codes and static NFC tags have left open, giving brands a harder target to copy and giving buyers a more direct way to confirm what they own.