LDV Blog

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!

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.

Evan Nisselson, Founder and General Partner at LDV Capital, first met Victor Riparbelli, Co-Founder & CEO at Synthesia, in November 2018 and shared his team’s vision to empower anyone to create video content without cameras or studios. In 2019, LDV Capital led their $3.1M Seed financing.

In January 2025, the company announced their $180 million in a Series D round led by NEA, with participation from WiL, Atlassian Ventures, PSP Growth and existing investors. Adobe Ventures made a strategic investment in April 2025. That same month, the company surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Synthesia is now the UK’s most valuable generative AI media company and the worldwide market leader in enterprise AI video. Most recently, the team announced Synthesia 3.0, the next era of video.

At our 11th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Evan and Victor discussed Victor’s journey, Synthesia’s rapid growth and the future potential of AI video, including the rise of video agents – the next big shift toward making videos interactive and personalized, evolving the medium beyond a one-way broadcasting format.

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 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.

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!

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.

Matt Uyttendaele is the director of the AI for Chemistry group at Meta. His group applies machine learning to material discovery for several applications: clean hydrogen, sorbents for direct air capture, and next-generation displays. In 2024, we were honored to have him speak at our Annual General Meeting about a new application of AI that he has been working on for the last few years and how it relates to his career in visual technologies.

We at LDV Capital celebrated our 10th LDV Vision Summit Anniversary! People from over 30 countries were part of our premier global gathering in visual tech & AI. We were thrilled to welcome speakers from Sequoia Capital, Wellville, Generate:Biomedicines, DCVC Bio, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Nobias Therapeutics, Snap, Future Ventures, Meta, Axios and more. Two of our LDV Capital portfolio companies presented as well: Synthesia and Sonus Microsystems.

On March 21, at our 10th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Evan Nisselson, Founder and General Partner at LDV Capital, will speak with Dr. Molly Gibson – Co-Founder and Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Generate:Biomedicines. They will discuss how AI and machine learning empower and disrupt the scientific process across life sciences, biotech, advanced materials, and more. This will have a tremendous impact on business and society.

We are pleased to announce that we have raised our fourth LDV Capital fund with $31M. We will continue investing in the same unique thesis that has not changed since founding LDV Capital in 2012. The majority of data our brains analyze is visual so the majority of data that AI will analyze will be visual as well. Visual data and visual technologies are critical for the success of artificial intelligence horizontally across all sectors.

As we approach the 10th Annual LDV Vision Summit, we thought it fitting to pose a few burning questions to Serge Belongie, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, the head of the Danish Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence and LDV Capital Expert in Residence. We delved into his experiences as a prominent figure in AI and sought his insights on the present landscape of visual technologies. Additionally, we explored his thoughts on the prospects available to researchers aiming to bring their work to market and impact humanity at large.

Synthesia, the market leader in AI video generation, announced their exciting $90 million Series C financing. The round is led by Philippe Botteri at Accel along with NVIDIA and existing investors. The company now officially hits unicorn status, and we are extremely proud of the brilliant co-founders, Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Dr. Lourdes Agapito and Dr. Matthias Niessner, and the entire Synthesia team!

In April 2019, we led their Seed financing round when they were pre-product and pre-revenue. We met with 4 brilliant co-founders and were impressed with their big vision: to empower everyone to make video content without cameras, microphones, or studios.

This milestone reinforces our belief in the transformative power of visual technologies and AI and their pivotal role in shaping the future. At LDV Capital, we are honored to have played a very small part in their incredible journey which continues to evolve every day.

Last year, we celebrated 10 years of investing in people building businesses powered by visual tech & AI, but it’s just the beginning! Visual technology innovations will continue to be the crux of automation for decades and beyond. Computer vision, machine learning and AI will be the key enablers for innovation in healthcare, precision medicine, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, sustainability, and many more industries.

Which sectors over the next 10 years will have the most societal impact from research advancements leveraging visual technologies and artificial intelligence? In the lead-up to our 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit – the premier global gathering in visual tech – hosted virtually on March 28, we addressed this and 4 other burning questions to 11 brilliant professors & researchers.

Check out photographs from our most recent LDV Happy Hour event! We hosted 75 fantastic technology innovators, serial entrepreneurs, deep tech researchers and investors across the New York tech ecosystem (with one of our guests flying in from Boston)!

We at LDV Capital have been investing in AI for over 10 years to date, and have made 7 investments in teams building businesses leveraging Generative AI since 2018. We believe that this technology has significant commercial value as a utility that will empower SaaS businesses to disrupt legacy enterprises. Check out this article to learn more and see some examples of exponentially growing commercial applications in content creation, biotech and more.

We could not have accomplished this exciting milestone without our inspiring portfolio founders, experts, community members, co-investors and LDV LPs. Thank you!