Thomas Friedman of The New York Times defines today’s era as “The Age of Acceleration, Amplification and Democratization.” Artificial intelligence-powered automation is revolutionizing all industries, solving seemingly impossible problems at incredible speeds and efficiencies.

When LDV Capital was founded in 2012 by General Partner Evan Nisselson, the AI revolution was in its infancy. Evan developed the thesis that the majority of data that human brains analyze is visual, therefore visual data is critical to AI’s advancement. Visual data is any data across the light and electromagnetic spectrum from photos and videos to ultraviolet, thermal, radar, LIDAR, MRI, spectroscopy, and much more.

Over 18 years as a serial entrepreneur, Evan built four businesses powered by visual technologies. In 2003, he predicted phones would replace point & shoot cameras and everyone thought he was crazy.

At our first LDV Annual Vision Summit in 2014, Evan gave an opening keynote address on how visual technologies would change the world, most of which have come true.

Our Annual LDV Vision Summit counts about 15,000 entrepreneurs, technologists and investors in its community and is the premier global gathering in visual tech and AI. At out 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit, hosted in March 2023, 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, Niels Bohr Institute, Humanity, Northeastern University, Forbes, and more.

"LDV Vision Summit was a blast this year, it's always great to hear from all the great entrepreneurs in LDV's network live. Also love that the LDV team drives discussions on all aspects of building companies, from fundamental science to leadership, team building, current trends, and history to better deal with the future. Highly recommend it," said Clément Farabet, DeepMind’s VP of Research, in a fireside chat with Evan in 2023.

"The summit was a great reminder of the now essential role computer vision plays in our everyday lives and in our future. While the underlying topics were incredibly diverse, an interesting pattern did surface regarding the opportunities & challenges behind all these innovations, not to mention the teams behind them: as Evan always says, it's all about the people," said Dr. Alexandra Boussommier, Founder & CEO at ImVitro, LDV portfolio company.

“I know it is their tag line but the LDV Vision Summit truly is the premier global gathering in visual tech. At Lux, we never miss it and are always happy to take the stage and share our thoughts around the greatest opportunities in visual tech with this fabulous community,” said Deena Shakir, Partner at Lux Capital.

“Really amazing that you started off with a somewhat contrarian futurist perspective on computer vision. Our co-investments in Ezra & Synthesia and others in our portfolio such as Pinterest and Hyperscience are proving that your thesis is working today,” said Rick Heitzmann, Founder & Partner at FirstMark, in a fireside chat with Evan in 2021.

Investing in Generative AI Before the Term Existed

In the past decade, we have experienced many incredible technical advancements, starting with the emergence of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), a deep learning algorithm most commonly applied to analyze imagery. Then came Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), generative models that can learn from a set of training data and generate new data with the same characteristics as the training data. Now, there is the advent of Generative AI, a type of AI system capable of generating text, images, or other media in response to human or computer prompts and inputs. Throughout, visual technologies have enabled computers to see.

In 2016, we forecasted that the Internet of Eyes would be larger than the Internet of Things. Every inanimate object will have the ability to see and act on what it sees. Check out the keynote address of Pete Warden of Useful Sensors from our 9th Annual LDV Vision Summit to learn about a small hardware module that detects nearby faces and performs facial recognition. It’s the first commercial application of this technology.

Our 2017 LDV Capital Insights report estimated that by 2022, there will be 45 billion cameras in the world collecting exponential amounts of visual data. A majority of that data will never be seen by a human eye. High-quality data is essential for training algorithms. 

In 2018, we published an article about the power of deep learning with synthetic data before the term Generative AI even existed. Today, tools powered by Generative AI range from automatically creating content for virtual worlds, to creating/editing images and videos, designing websites in minutes, and more. At LDV Capital, we envision that Generative AI, as a utility, will empower Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses. Since 2018, we have invested in 8 teams that are building businesses leveraging Generative AI: Synthesia, Uizard, Memorable AI, Headroom, Earkick, Aquifer Motion, Daimon Labs and BurnerPage. 

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.

We are still in the early stage of AI advancements. There will be numerous investment opportunities! At LDV Capital, we are an early-stage investor horizontally across all industries.

This post was written in collaboration with Ash Cleary, an analyst at LDV Capital.