Former Tesla product manager wants to make luxury goods impossible to fake, starting with a chip

The article discusses Veritas, a startup founded by former Tesla product manager Luci Holland, which aims to combat the luxury goods counterfeiting crisis by developing a “hack-proof” chip to authenticate products. Traditional methods of authentication, such as physical marks and certificates, have become unreliable due to increasingly sophisticated counterfeiters. Veritas’s chip, about the size of a small gem, uses NFC technology to allow consumers to verify authenticity by tapping their smartphones. The chip is designed to be minimally disruptive to the product and can be inserted even after manufacturing without compromising integrity. To enhance security, the chip includes a custom coil and bridge structure that causes it to go dormant and hide product codes if tampering is detected. On the software side, product data is linked to Veritas’s backend, which monitors scanning behavior to prevent fraud. Additionally, the company creates blockchain-based digital clones of products for use in digital galleries or metaverse activities. Veritas offers brands a software suite to manage chipped products, share product stories