Veritas expands anti-counterfeit chip to metal and glass products
Veritas says its second-generation authentication chip can now work on metal and scan through glass, opening up new uses for jewellery, trophies and fragrance bottles.
Veritas is expanding its anti-counterfeit technology beyond clothing, with a second-generation microchip designed to work on metal surfaces and scan through glass. The startup says the chip is now ready for applications including jewellery, trophies, hard-surface products and fragrance bottles, alongside its existing garment integrations. 12
The company’s system links a physical product to a digital certificate. Veritas says each chip produces a secure response when tapped and includes a tamper-detection wire, making the object itself part of the authentication process rather than relying on a copied QR code or a static NFC link. Customers can use the company’s app to view a certificate of ownership and product information. 12
Why Veritas is changing the chip
Luci Holland, Veritas’ founder and a former Tesla technical product manager, told TechCrunch that the new chip is intended to broaden the range of products that can carry an embedded identity. Metal and glass create different challenges from fabric, so support for those materials could make the system more practical for watches, jewellery, awards and bottles. 1
Veritas also announced a partnership with ATHLOS, the women’s track-and-field competition founded by Alexis Ohanian. All 18 ATHLOS championship crowns will include Veritas chips, allowing their authenticity to be checked. The company has also embedded one of its chips in a pair of LeBron James’ first Nike shoes reimagined by artist Adam Port. 1
The company’s official site describes a broader product passport system around the chip. Brands can create digital records, offer ownership experiences and let customers scan an item with a smartphone. Veritas says its app and brand portal are now available, while its technology is designed to work without visibly damaging the product. 2
What the expansion means
Veritas is tackling a real weakness in simple digital authentication: a copied code can be reproduced even when the item it supposedly represents is fake. Connecting the proof to an embedded chip is a more convincing approach, but it still depends on brands fitting the hardware consistently and customers trusting the company that stores the product records. The move into metal, glass and trophies is therefore important because it tests whether the technology can become part of many different objects, not just garments.
Our opinion
The strongest part of Veritas’ expansion is its focus on the physical link between an object and its digital identity. A product passport is useful only if it is difficult to separate from the product itself, and a tamper-aware chip makes that relationship easier to understand than a label or QR code alone. The company still has to prove that its hardware can scale across luxury supply chains without adding awkward production steps, but support for metal and glass gives it a clearer route into categories where ordinary tags are less convincing.