visual tech — LDV Capital Blog on Visual Technologies and AI — LDV Capital
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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!
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.
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.
Join our 10th Annual LDV Vision Summit on March 21 and witness the fireside chat between LDV Capital’s Evan Nisselson and Roelof Botha, Managing Partner and Steward of Sequoia Capital. Roelof has spent over 20 years building companies in Silicon Valley. He began within the walls of nascent PayPal and led the company through both its IPO in early 2002 and the subsequent acquisition by eBay. Roelof joined Sequoia in 2003 to help founders build enduring businesses. In 2017, he assumed leadership of Sequoia Capital's US/Europe business and became a Steward of the Sequoia Partnership. Roelof is a Director of 23andMe, Block, Ethos, Inside.com, Landis, mmhmm, MongoDB, Natera, Pendulum Therapeutics, and Unity Technologies, and recently led Sequoia's investment in Meeno. Previously, he was a Director of companies that include YouTube, Tumblr, Xoom, Eventbrite, and Evernote. He also led Sequoia's investment in Instagram.
Roelof and Evan will discuss trends and early-stage investment opportunities in businesses leveraging visual technologies and AI.
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.
The climate crisis is resulting in an increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters, and society needs new tools to be able to cope and adapt. Sonia Kastner is the CEO & founder of Pano AI, the leader in wildfire early detection and intelligence. Pano combines advanced hardware, AI and computer vision to automatically detect, verify and classify wildfire events in real-time.
At our 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Sonia shared how visual technologies are at the crux of disaster mitigation solutions to help tackle the climate crisis.
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.
Meet Ty Ahmad-Taylor, VP of Monetization at Snap. Ty’s background: 32 years in information design, 26 years in consumer-facing software and product development leadership, and 25 years in interactive television services development. He has worked at four startups (one went public, and the other three were acquired), and at large social, media, and consumer electronic companies.
In the fireside chat with LDV’s Evan Nisselson, he shared his views on three things that every CEO should do, inclusive teams, systems thinking, and an exclusion filter that could make our experience of using social media so much better! Evan and Ty also touched on ideas ripe for AI automation, machine learning algorithms that make TikTok successful, and the mixed reality environment that’s coming soon.
At our 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit, we welcomed top technologists, investors, and entrepreneurs to discuss cutting-edge computer vision, machine learning and AI solutions to improve the world we live in.
About a thousand people tuned in from all around the world to listen to expert speakers from DeepMind, Mural, Snap, BioAge, Synthesia, Salesforce, Harvard Medical School, Insight Partners, Useful Sensors, Conviction, Niels Bohr Institute, Air Street Capital, Uizard, Pano, Humanity, Northeastern University, Seedcamp, Forbes, and more.
Which business sectors will be the most disrupted by visual technologies and AI in the next 10 years? In the lead-up to our 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit – the premier global gathering in visual tech – hosted virtually on March 28, investors from Seedcamp, Northzone, Insight Partners, DCVC, VAS Ventures, Air Street Capital, and we at LDV Capital share insights.
In the lead-up to our 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit – the premier global gathering in visual tech (hosted virtually on March 28), we interviewed some of our past & future speakers. Meet Luc Vincent of Meta, Steffen Tjerrild of Synthesia, Kristen Fortney of BioAge, Clément Farabet, Camilo Fosco of Memorable, Alexandra Boussommier of ImVitro, Michael Geer of Humanity, Henrik Haugbølle of Uizard, Mariano Battan of Mural, Alexandre Winter of Norbert Health, Andrew Rabinovich of Headroom, Karin Andrea Stephan of Earkick, Adam Paulisick of maad labs, and Rebecca Paoletti of CakeWorks.
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 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 could not have accomplished this exciting milestone without our inspiring portfolio founders, experts, community members, co-investors and LDV LPs. Thank you!
At our 8th Annual LDV Vision Summit, we had the privilege of hosting a fireside chat between LDV's Evan Nisselson and Dr. Martin Varsavsky, an extremely successful serial entrepreneur, professor and investor who has founded 8 companies (3 with unicorn status) in the US and Europe in the last 30 years.
Check out the video recording or read our shortened and lightly edited transcript.