LDV Blog

At LDV Capital's 2026 Annual General Meeting, Principal Ash Cleary outlined how visual technology and AI are driving the next wave of intelligent automation across legacy industries. Moving beyond basic digitization, advances in computer vision, machine perception, robotics, digital twins, and spatial intelligence are enabling autonomous decision-making in logistics, construction, manufacturing, and mining. The article explores trillion-dollar opportunities emerging from these technologies and why visual data is becoming the foundation for the future of industrial infrastructure.

We are thrilled to share a few photographs and stories from this year’s invite-only Annual General Meeting – a special event where our LPs connect in person with our team, portfolio companies and experts.

It was a pleasure to host entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and special guests such as Maria Gotsch, Andy Parsons, Mark Kalow, Fernando De La Torre, Thomas Knox, Rebekah Griesenauer, Hani Eskandari, Omar Issa, Rebecca Paoletti, Robert Levitan, Serge Belongie, Emi Gal, Summer Bedard, Dave Zohrob, Dawn Barber, Jeremiah Robison and many more!

Our Annual General Meeting was a true highlight – full of thoughtful conversations, valuable insights and genuine connection. We’re grateful to everyone who joined us and contributed to making it a success!

We are honored to work with brilliant people every day!

Since founding in 2012, LDV Capital is a thesis-driven early-stage venture fund investing in people building businesses powered by visual technology and artificial intelligence. Our thesis = a majority of the data our brains analyze is visual. Therefore, the majority of the data artificial intelligence will analyze will also be visual across the light and electromagnetic spectrum.

People used to say that our thesis was cute, niche and science fiction. Now it is validated.

We invest horizontally across all sectors such as: agriculture, healthcare, nanotechnology, logistics, manufacturing, entertainment, mobility, construction, optics, sensors, life sciences and biotech, robotics, materials science, video, mapping, security and much more.

LDV Capital IV: We are investing out of our 4th fund which was announced in 2024.

LDV Capital I & II are returned. We continue to have significant upside potential across each of our funds thanks to our brilliant entrepreneurs, experts, team and LP partners.

Luciana Lixandru, Partner at Sequoia Capital, focuses on enterprise and consumer technology companies across Europe and co-leads Sequoia's early-stage investment business. She is a Director of Pennylane, Robco, Stripe, Tacto, and VEED, and is passionate about helping founders unlock their potential and think on a global scale. Luciana joined Sequoia in 2021 to help open its London office - while the firm had been partnering with founders in Europe for years, a team on the ground has enabled them to spot outliers earlier and partner more deeply. With a decade of experience in the European venture market, prior as a partner at Accel, Luciana has deep domain expertise, having backed giants like UiPath (PATH), Deliveroo (DROOF), and Miro, among others.

At our 11th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Luciana and Evan discussed Luciana’s early investments, including UiPath – a company that initially leveraged computer vision and spent nearly a decade finding product–market fit before achieving major success. They also explored trends and early-stage investment opportunities in businesses harnessing visual technologies and AI. Check out the recording from our 11th Annual LDV Vision Summit or read our shortened and lightly edited transcript.

Arcturus has created a volumetric video platform that captures and broadcasts sports action in full 3D. They redefine how we connect with our favorite sports moments by delivering compelling new camera angles for 2D broadcasters and new 3D sports experiences never possible before on mobile or immersive devices. Their SaaS platform delivers the capture, processing, production and distribution of this content. We are thrilled to partner with Steve Sullivan, Devin Horsman, Ewan Johnson, Fraser McArthur and the entire Arcturus team as they deliver the future of live 3D broadcast quality sports coverage.

We led their $2.3M seed round with participation from Myelin VC, Vanderbilt University and angel investors including Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York.

Meet Dr. Daniel Sodickson – Chief of Innovation in Radiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and an Expert at LDV Capital. In his book, “The Future of Seeing: How Imaging Is Changing Our World”, he traces humanity’s long quest to illuminate the invisible – from the first biological eyes that evolved in Earth’s ancient oceans to the telescopes, microscopes and MRI machines that map worlds beyond the reach of natural vision. Blending history, science and imagination, he reveals how imaging has reshaped medicine, altered economies and reframed our understanding of privacy and identity. Now, on the brink of an AI-driven revolution, Dr. Sodickson invites us to consider a future in which technology emulates not just our sight, but our very minds – changing how we see the world, each other and ourselves. Dan’s vision aligns with our fund’s thesis dating back to 2012.

We’re excited to welcome Ross Cooke to our LDV Capital team. We were impressed by his communication style, problem-solving skills and expertise in nanoscience, physics, chemistry of advanced materials and materials science. Ross is particularly interested in how visual technologies and AI can transform long-established industries where innovation can have an outsized impact, such as healthcare, energy and mining. He is also excited about opportunities in materials science and supply chain.

Earlier in May, we shared photographs and stories from this year’s invite-only LDV Capital Annual General Meeting (AGM) – a special event where our LPs connect in person with our team, portfolio companies and experts. Our Associate, Ash Cleary, presented a keynote to our LPs on visual technologies that will unlock beyond what we can see as humans. We’re now excited to share a few of the trends Ash showcased in his presentation with our wider LDV community.

With new multimodal models emerging almost weekly, staying current on computer vision and machine learning can be challenging. At our 11th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Dr. Serge Belongie – Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Head of the Danish Pioneer Centre for AI, and LDV Capital Expert in Residence – shared key insights behind these advances.

It was a pleasure to host entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and special guests such as Maria Gotsch, Andy Parsons, Brian Cohen, Mark Kalow, Fernando De La Torre, Kristin Dana, Carlos Bhola, Thomas Knox, Matthew Zeiler, Rebekah Griesenauer, Hani Eskandari, Omar Issa, Rebecca Paoletti, Robert Levitan, Andres Glusman, Seth Haberman, Kelly Hoey, Medha Vedaprakash, Emi Gal, Adam Maher, Summer Bedard, Dave Zohrob, Dawn Barber, Jeremiah Robison and many more!

We are thrilled to partner with Fieldstone Bio because their microbial sensors can identify targets in the environment at massive scales. Existing methods rely on bulky, expensive equipment and lab processing that takes significant time. Fieldstone Bio's breakthrough enables faster remote sensing using off-the-shelf hyperspectral cameras.

We at LDV Capital participated in their $5M seed round led by Ubiquity Ventures and with participation from E14 Fund.

At our 11th Annual LDV Vision Summit earlier this year, a panel of distinguished experts explored the future of materials science powered by visual tech and AI. Click the link below to hear from Dr. David Smith, Associate Chair and James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of ECE at Duke University; Dr. Kristin Schmidt, Strategy Assistant for Accelerated Discovery and Vice Chair of the Physical Sciences Council at IBM; Dr. Chirranjeevi Gopal, Co-Founder and CTO at Mitra Chem, the first lithium-ion battery materials manufacturer; Dr. Amanda Petford-Long, Director of the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Lab; and Ash Cleary, Associate at LDV Capital.

We are very excited to partner with the fantastic deep tech team at ResiQuant that is developing a platform that utilizes agentic AI and computer vision to transform data into actionable, building-level insights. This empowers property owners and carriers to mitigate vulnerabilities, streamline workflows and enhance underwriting decisions.

We at LDV Capital led their $4M seed round with participation from Foothill Ventures, Pear VC, Alumni Ventures and angels.

We are thrilled to share that we have returned our LDV Capital I & II funds. We continue to have significant upside potential across each of our funds thanks to our brilliant entrepreneurs, experts, team and LP partners.

We continue investing out of our LDV Capital IV fund.

LPs say we are highly differentiated, disciplined, have high-quality sourcing and successfully create value by investing in category leaders at the earliest stages.

We are excited to be recruiting an Analyst to join our team to help us identify, analyze and evaluate investment opportunities. You will be a major contributor to all aspects of our fund from sourcing, market research, due diligence and supporting our portfolio companies.

In September 2021, Ash Cleary began his venture capital journey by joining Evan Nisselson and our LDV Capital team as an Analyst, investing out of Fund III as part of a two-year program. After successfully completing the program, Ash was promoted to Associate and now invests out of LDV Capital's fourth fund.

Check out his insights and reflections on the past three years—working with the team and collaborating with brilliant deep tech entrepreneurs worldwide, building businesses powered by visual technology and artificial intelligence.

Evan Nisselson first met Roelof Botha, Managing Partner and Steward of Sequoia Capital, while fundraising for his startup in 2005. Roelof said, “ I think back to that meeting we had, and you had a vision for the future and the impact of visual, just imagery on consumer experiences was completely spot on.”

At our 10th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Roelof joined Evan for a fireside chat to discuss trends and early-stage investment opportunities in businesses leveraging visual technologies and AI. They spoke about Roelof’s insights from the ups and downs of the PayPal days, marshmallow tests, personality traits and much more!

DANNCE.AI is bringing to market a novel phenotyping platform to digitize the clinical assessments used by clinicians and drug developers to quantify movement. We led their $2.6M pre-seed round along with co-investors Glasswing Ventures, The Leo Lion Company, Duke Capital Partners, and Merck Digital Sciences Studio.

Dr. David Rabuka is a serial biotech entrepreneur and investor based in Berkeley California. His expertise is concentrated on translating new technologies into clinical therapies. In 2024, Dr. Rabuka spoke about investment trends & opportunities in ​​life sciences and biotech at our Annual General Meeting. Check out our shortened & lightly edited transcript.

LDV Capital's Evan Nisselson and Ash Cleary cover topics ranging from spectroscopy and nanomaterials to enhance food and agricultural production, to renewable energy forecasting and grid management, and predictive digital twins for the supply chain.

Meet Dr. Molly Gibson – Co-Founder and Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Generate:Biomedicines, Origination Partner at Flagship Pioneering. LDV Capital's Founder & General Partner Evan Nisselson discussed with Molly how AI and machine learning empower and disrupt the scientific process across life sciences, biotech, advanced materials and more.

If you missed our 10th Annual LDV Vision Summit, this is your chance to watch the video or read our shortened & lightly edited transcript.