Ash Cleary — LDV Capital Blog on Visual Technologies and AI — LDV Capital
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!
Our 12th Annual LDV Vision Summit brought together deep tech entrepreneurs, technologists, academics, researchers and investors for engaging discussions on innovations in cutting-edge visual tech and AI. We continue to be excited by the accelerating convergence of visual tech and AI across both the digital and physical worlds.
We were thrilled to welcome speakers from Insight Partners, Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School, Bek Ventures, 01 Advisors, University of Oxford, The Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence, and LocalGlobe among others.
A special thank you goes to our speakers and attendees!
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.
Every robot, drone, self-driving car, delivery bot, and surgical assistant that claims “intelligence” is fundamentally a product of visual and/or electromagnetic perception systems. The success of Physical AI doesn’t start with neural networks or GPUs – it starts with cameras, sensors, and spectral scanners that give machines their first sense of reality.
Physical AI will not succeed until machines can truly see.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Our LDV platform events bring together the world’s brightest technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs, deep tech researchers and investors to discuss the latest trends in visual tech and AI. Check out a few photographs from our most recent invite-only Happy Hour event hosted in New York City.
Our Annual General Meetings (AGM) are exclusive, invite-only events for LDV Capital LPs, portfolio companies, LDV experts and special guests. We are thrilled to share a glimpse of our most recent AGM in New York City, giving you a unique opportunity to see what usually happens behind closed doors.
We believe that visual technologies will continue to be the crux of advancements in materials science, across nanomaterials and metamaterials, resulting in the transformation of various industrial, medical and consumer applications. Embedded AI will enable materials to reconfigure themselves autonomously in response to their environment. As sensing abilities and algorithms improve, the full potential of navigating the compositional and configurational possibilities of materials will catalyze widespread transformation for optics, biomarker diagnostics, robotics, 3D printing and more.
Our Vision events bring together the world’s brightest technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs, deep tech researchers and investors to discuss the latest trends in visual tech and AI. Check out a few photographs from our most recent invite-only Happy Hour event hosted in New York City.
Since starting LDV Capital in 2012, we've been actively cultivating our thriving tech community through a range of events, including Annual Vision Summits, Happy Hour gatherings, monthly dinners, and more. Our LDV community now boasts over 2000 members, and we're excited to offer a sneak peek into our exclusive events with a selection of featured photographs.
Thrilled to present a selection of photos capturing moments from our recent invite-only "Happy Hour" event, held in New York City. This event brought together outstanding technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs, deep tech researchers, and investors from within the vibrant New York tech ecosystem.
Fantastic technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs, deep tech researchers and investors across the New York tech ecosystem gathered to discuss the latest trends in visual technologies. Check out photographs from our most recent LDV Happy Hour event.
We host our LDV Community Dinners & Happy Hours to bring together our tight-knit LDV community – the world’s brightest technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs, deep tech researchers and investors – to discuss cutting-edge visual tech. Check out a few photographs from our fourth and final 2022 “Happy Hour” event hosted in New York City.
We host our LDV Community Dinners & Happy Hours to bring together our community. At these events, you can meet the world’s brightest technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs and deep tech technologists, researchers and investors to discuss what's happening today, and what, most importantly, will happen tomorrow.
After two years of virtual meetings, we are thrilled to start hosting invite-only LDV Community events in person again! Check out a few photographs from our latest “Happy Hour” in NYC.
We are thrilled to announce the addition of Brian Derickson and Ash Cleary to our LDV Capital team as Analysts. They will help us evaluate investment opportunities, support our portfolio companies as well as research and write ourInsights reports.