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

Veritas, a technology startup founded by former Tesla product manager Varun Sriram, launched a new hardware-software authentication platform this week in San Francisco to combat the global counterfeit luxury goods crisis. By integrating custom-designed microchips directly into high-end products, the company aims to provide a tamper-proof verification method for both manufacturers and consumers. The initiative comes as the luxury sector grapples with massive financial losses, while the second-hand market struggles to maintain trust among buyers who are often unable to distinguish between genuine items and high-quality fakes. The scale of the problem is immense, with luxury brands reportedly losing more than $30 billion in annual revenue due to the proliferation of counterfeit goods. This issue has expanded significantly alongside the booming secondary market, which is currently valued at approximately $210 billion. Until now, authentication has largely relied on manual inspections or digital certificates that can be easily replicated. Veritas intends to disrupt this by embedding physical security at the point of manufacture, ensuring that every product has a unique, non-cloneable digital identity that stays with it throughout its lifecycle. The technology behind Veritas involves a combination of secure hardware and a proprietary software layer. Unlike standard QR codes or basic NFC tags that can be copied, these specialized chips are designed to be virtually impossible to forge. When a buyer or reseller scans the product using a smartphone, the software verifies the chip’s authenticity against a secure database. This provides instant peace of mind for collectors and helps luxury houses maintain the exclusivity and value of their brand by effectively locking counterfeiters out of the primary and secondary supply chains. By bridges the gap between physical craftsmanship and digital security, Veritas is positioning itself as an essential infrastructure provider for the fashion and luxury industries. Sriram’s background at Tesla, a company known for hardware and software integration, likely influenced the startup's approach to systemic security. As the resale economy continues to grow, such technological safeguards could become the standard requirement for any high-value transaction, potentially saving the industry billions of dollars and protecting consumers from fraudulent schemes.