LDV Capital Raises $24M Third Fund To Continue Investing in Early-Stage Businesses Powered by Visual Technologies

LDV Capital invests horizontally across all business verticals in North America, Europe & Israel from healthcare, agriculture, mobility, logistics, manufacturing, media, design, enterprise tools and much more.

The firm’s third fund is more than double the size of its second fund and continues its unique thesis to invest in people building businesses that leverage AI, machine learning and computer vision to analyze visual data across all business verticals.

May 3, 2021 - New York, New York: LDV Capital – the only venture capital firm with a thesis of investing in people building businesses powered by visual technologies, announced it raised its third fund with $24M. LDV invests at the earliest stages of businesses including seed, pre-seed and often invests in deep tech teams at the prototype stage.

Evan Nisselson, LDV Capital’s Founder and General Partner

“IPOs of Snap, Pinterest, Zoom, Roblox and valuable exits like Instagram, YouTube, Ring, and many others show that businesses powered by visual technologies are creating significant value for investors,” says LDV Capital’s Founder and General Partner Evan Nisselson, a renowned thought leader in the visual tech space for over 25 years. “These successes are the tip of the iceberg in regards to business opportunities for visual technologies to solve problems, entertain, increase efficiencies, make money, and hopefully improve the world that we live in.”

LDV Capital’s third fund investors include international fund-of-funds, an endowment, a sovereign wealth fund, family offices, entrepreneurs, deep tech experts and employees of Fortune 500 companies.

“LDV Capital was our first investor in Mapillary which was acquired by Facebook in 2020,” says serial entrepreneur and computer vision expert Jan Erik Solem, a co-founder of Mapillary, an LDV Expert in Residence, and LDV investor. “They were a tremendous value add to our Mapillary team from our first prototype to our acquisition by Facebook. Their visual technology focus, strong conviction, exceptionally strong network and hands-on collaboration make them great investors and I highly recommend them to fellow entrepreneurs.” 

The firm was founded by Evan Nisselson in 2012 after building four visual technology startups over 18 years in Silicon Valley, New York, and Europe.

Abigail Hunter-Syed, Partner at LDV Capital

Abigail Hunter-Syed joined LDV Capital in February 2017 as Director of Operations and Platform. Two years later, she was promoted to VP of Operations and in 2020, to Partner. 

“We invest across all enterprise and consumer verticals where visual tech has the most potential to improve businesses and, hopefully, our world. There are tremendous opportunities for visual tech across healthcare, security, manufacturing, agriculture, entertainment, logistics, transportation, and more. I’m highly interested in the ways visual tech is powering the democratization of content creation and driving global connectivity,” says Abigail Hunter-Syed, Partner at LDV Capital. Her Women Leading Visual Tech interview series showcase researchers, technologists, investors and inventors whose work in visual tech is reshaping business and society.

(April 2022 Update: After five years with LDV Capital, Abby decided to leave LDV to take a corporate role with fewer responsibilities that will allow her to have more time to focus on her young kids during these crazy times.)

Peter Stern joined the team in February 2020 as a Venture Partner. He is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Datek Online and then sold it in a multi-Billion dollar merger to form the second-largest brokerage firm in 2003. He was also the founder of Zenbe which was sold to Facebook and an executive at other technology businesses. He used to build LiDAR devices in his basement and for the military. He is also the current CEO of Voyant Photonics – an LDV portfolio company that creates the next generation of chip-scale LiDAR.

Investing in people building visual technologies that leverage computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data across the full tech stack. Visual data examples: images, videos, thermal, radar, lidar, x-ray’s, ultrasound, MRI, CT scan, 2D, 3D, 4D, 6D and more.

LDV Capital invests horizontally across all business verticals in North America, Europe & Israel from healthcare (Ezra – cancer screening leveraging MRI and artificial intelligence, Norbert Health – contactless device that quickly detects and predicts the health of people around you at work and at home, Cionic – a platform for human augmentation that powers people with physical limitations), agriculture (Gardin - Optical sensing, machine vision and analytics allow producers to measure plant physiology and proactively adjust parameters in order to optimize operations), construction (Gryps – a software platform with RPA, computer vision and machine learning to deliver smart analytics to facility owners to increase their ROI), media (Synthesia – an AI-driven video production, TVision Insights - computer vision that optimizes Advertisement Engagement), Design (Uizard - a design tool for non-designers), autonomous vehicles (Sea Machines - autonomous & remote command technology for marine industries), Enterprise Tools (Clarifai - helping data scientists, developers, researchers and enterprises to master the entire artificial intelligence lifecycle), to video conferencing (Headroom - an AI-powered platform to improve communication in meetings) and much more.

Their portfolio companies have raised follow-on capital from top-tier funds including Sequoia, Union Square Ventures, FirstMark, and others. The firm has an extensive platform of initiatives that increase portfolio value and deliver network effects including unique deal flow, portfolio recruiting, and key customers for their businesses. 

The firm’s first LDV Vision Summit in 2014 has become known to top technologists, investors, and entrepreneurs in New York and around the world as the premier gathering in visual tech. In 2021, due to its virtual nature, the 7th annual LDV Vision Summit was attended by almost a thousand people from 15 countries. Since 2011, LDV Capital has held invite-only, gender-balanced LDV Community dinners (monthly pre/post-pandemic) that bring together leading entrepreneurs and investors to help each other succeed.

Additionally, every summer the firm does a deep dive into a sector ripe for disruption via visual technologies in their LDV Insights research report. Recent reports include Healthcare, Logistics, Manufacturing, Agriculture and Food. 

The firm is known for a vast expert network including entrepreneurs and computer vision leaders from Cornell Tech, Columbia University, Harvard University, MGH/Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lyft, Facebook, Apple, Adobe, and many more.

This news first appeared in Forbes and their Midas Touch newsletter.