11th Annual LDV Vision Summit

March 25, 2025, 11:00 AM - 2:30 PM ET
Virtual Event

Since its inception in 2014, our Annual LDV Vision Summit has been the premier global gathering in visual tech and AI. Every year we bring together an impressive array of brilliant speakers, ranging from tech giants to under-the-radar startups, esteemed research labs and leading venture capital firms.

Please RSVP to join over one thousand people from around the world to learn how cutting-edge computer vision, machine learning and AI solutions will improve the world we live in!

Speakers

More speakers will be announced soon!

Agenda

Keynote: Investment Opportunities Leveraging Visual Tech & AI Across Agriculture, Neuroscience, Advanced Materials, Synthetic Biology and Much More 

LDV Capital has been investing in and partnering with people building businesses powered by visual technologies and artificial intelligence for over 12 years. LDV invested in 12 companies leveraging Generative AI before that term even existed. Founder and General Partner Evan Nisselson will share insights into the trends shaping the investment landscape for the next decade, with a spotlight on visual technologies and AI.
– Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV Capital

Fireside Chat: Who Are The Daring People Who Will Build The Next Legendary European Companies?

“You have to allow yourself to dream as a venture capitalist. Every single company can die in 1000 different ways and succeed in just a couple.” Luciana Lixandru

Luciana Lixandru, Partner at Sequoia, focuses on enterprise and consumer technology companies across Europe and co-leads Sequoia's early-stage investment business. She is a Director of Pennylane, Robco, Stripe, Tacto, and VEED, and is passionate about helping founders unlock their potential and think on a global scale. 

Luciana joined Sequoia in 2021 to help open its London office - while the firm had been partnering with founders in Europe for years, a team on the ground has enabled them to spot outliers earlier and partner more deeply. With a decade of experience in the European venture market, prior as a partner at Accel, Luciana has deep domain expertise, having backed giants like UiPath (PATH), Deliveroo (DROOF), and Miro, among others.

About 30% of LDV Capital investments in each fund are founded in Europe and we continue to see tremendous investment opportunities across Europe. LDV was the first investor in Mapillary which Sequoia also invested in and later it was acquired by Meta. Other European LDV companies include Gardin, Earkick, VitVio, Synthesia and others.

Luciana and Evan will discuss Luciana’s early investments such as UiPath, a company that originally leveraged computer vision and spent a decade searching for product-market fit before becoming extremely successful. They will also discuss trends and early-stage investment opportunities in businesses leveraging visual technologies and AI.
– Luciana Lixandru, a Partner at Sequoia Capital
– Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV Capital

Keynote: Supercharging Drug Discovery and Advancing Critical New Classes of Antibiotics with AI

Generative AI not only empowers us to create images and videos but also enables companies to combat the escalating threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through AI-powered drug discovery.

Akhila Kosaraju is the CEO and President of Phare Bio. In partnership with MIT’s Collins Lab and Harvard’s Wyss Institute, the company has secured $27M from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to enhance its AI-driven drug discovery platform and create new classes of antibiotics. Their goal is to generate millions of new training data points across diverse drug development parameters, including toxicology and drug metabolism, to improve the clinical precision of AI-driven drug discovery, and to develop 15 novel antibiotics.
– Akhila Kosaraju, the CEO and President of Phare Bio

Keynote: AI-powered Property Intelligence for Insurers Via Maps Analysis & Structural Engineering Domain Expertise

With natural disasters increasing, built-world decisions often rely on incomplete or inaccurate property data. ResiQuant leverages AI to extend the reach of structural engineering expertise, analysis of visual mapping data to provide valuable insights to Insurers when making decisions about building vulnerabilities.

Francisco Galvis specializes in understanding structural behavior and designing solutions that integrate automation with engineering principles. His current focus as ResiQWuant's co-founder is on developing technology to support informed decision-making for structures exposed to natural disasters. He has co-authored multiple papers in top journals on disaster risk sharing experimental and computation research that contribute to developing a more resilient built world.
– Francisco Galvis, CTO & Co-Founder at ResiQuant

Panel: Finding The Diamonds In The Rough: Where Are The Billion-Dollar Investment Opportunities Leveraging Visual Technologies & AI?

Apple, NVIDIA, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Tesla, Shopify, Snap, Roblox, Pinterest, Delta, Zoom and many others are leveraging the power of visual technologies and AI. These innovations are transforming industries, from enabling autonomous vehicles and streamlining manufacturing to enhancing healthcare diagnostics and optimizing e-commerce. Their ability to process and analyze vast amounts of visual data across the light and electromagnetic spectrums at unprecedented speed and accuracy is improving operational efficiency and opening doors to new business opportunities. The integration of visual technologies and AI is no longer optional—it is a key driver of competitive advantage.

Where are the investment opportunities today, tomorrow and 20 years into the future? Our panel of distinguished investors will explore trends in visual technologies and AI across various industries and their impact on society.

Moderator: Allie Garfinkle, Senior Finance Reporter at Fortune, Writer of the Term Sheet newsletter

Panelists:
– Annie Case is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins and focuses on investments across consumer technology, digital health and enterprise software. Prior to Kleiner Perkins, Annie worked in product and business operations at Uber. She will join our VC panel to discuss the next visual tech and AI billion-dollar investment opportunities.
– Karthik Ramakrishnan is a Partner at IVP, an early/growth stage-focused venture capital firm with $8.7B AUM. With a 40-year record of driving growth and 130+ IPOs, they have partnered with over 400 companies including Amplitude, Brex, Coinbase, Crowdstrike, Datadog, Discord, Figma, Slack, Snap, and Supercell.
– Kristin Baker Spohn, Co-founder & Managing Partner at BAM Corner Point, an early growth (Series B-D) enterprise technology focused venture capital firm, built in partnership with Balyasny Asset Management.

Fireside Chat: Building the Leading AI Video Communications Platform Since Before 'Generative AI' Was a Buzzword: A Founder’s Roller Coaster Stories From Pre AI Video Hype & Into The Future

Evan first met Victor, 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. A few months later, one of Synthesia’s first AI avatars premiered at our 6th Annual LDV Vision Summit. At the time, the avatars had limited emotional expressiveness, but that’s no longer the case! Synthesia’s AI-generated videos are now transforming how companies communicate with customers, employees, and beyond. Just as personalized newsletters became common, personalized videos from banks, insurance companies, and more are delivering exponential value. 

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. Synthesia is now the UK’s most valuable generative AI media company, and the worldwide market leader in enterprise AI video, with over 60,000 customers.

Evan and Victor will discuss Victor's journey, Synthesia's rapid growth and the future potential of AI video.

– Victor Riparbelli, Co-Founder & CEO at Synthesia
– Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV Capital

Keynote: Bringing Humanoid Robots to Life with NVIDIA’s New Simulation and Generative AI Tools

Humanoid robots can operate seamlessly in human-designed spaces, advancing automation. They hold immense potential for warehouses, factories, retail, healthcare, and more. Creating humanoid robots is challenging, demanding vast amounts of data for training. NVIDIA’s latest simulation and generative AI tools are designed to streamline and supercharge model development workflows.

Jan Kautz, VP of Learning & Perception Research at NVIDIA, leads a team advancing AI through visual perception, generative models, efficient deep learning, and foundation models. Their award-winning work, often featured in the media, aims to accelerate humanoid robotics development. Before joining NVIDIA in 2013, Jan was a tenured faculty member at University College London. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (1999), an MMath from the University of Waterloo (1999), received his PhD from the Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik (2003), and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2003-2006).
– Jan Kautz, VP of Learning & Perception Research at NVIDIA

Panel: Visual Tech Advancements in Materials Science Structuring New Material Discovery & Development 

Historically, materials discovery and design have mostly relied on trial-and-error methods that are extremely costly in terms of time and resources. This process has also been expensive and time-consuming as it relies on building upon known materials and substituting new elements to see what works. Cutting-edge AI/ML methods have the potential to solve long-standing materials science problems creatively. Generative models are expected to evolve in their coverage of materials classes, extending beyond materials composition to processing and form, and effectively capturing and encoding application constraints.This will lead to a more rapid generation of new candidate molecules, chemicals and materials to be widely adopted across most industries.

Join our panel of experts as they delve into what the future looks like for developments in materials science powered by visual tech & AI.

Moderator: Ash Cleary, Associate at LDV Capital

Panelists:
– Dr. Chirranjeevi Gopal, Co-Founder & CTO at Mitra Chem, the first lithium-ion battery materials manufacturer focused on shortening the lab-to-production timeline by over 90%, addressing the largest barrier to innovation: R&D and scale-up speed. Mitra Chem has been selected for a $100M grant from the DOE Manufacturing & Energy Supply Chains Office (MESC) and a $25 million grant by the State of Michigan (with additional funding anticipated).
– Dr. Amanda Petford-Long, Director of the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Lab. As Argonne Distinguished Fellow in the Materials Science Division, she participates in a BES-funded research program, and is currently leading the Argonne Microelectronics Institute.
– Dr. David Smith, Associate Chair, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of ECE at Duke University. He is also Director of the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics at Duke and holds the positions of Adjunct Associate Professor in the Physics Department at the University of California, San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London. Dr. Smith's research interests include the theory, simulation and characterization of unique electromagnetic structures, including photonic crystals and metamaterials. His groundbreaking work on transformation optics and cloaking has been featured in major news outlets, TV programs and documentaries.

Keynote: Synthetic Biology, Hyperspectral Imaging & AI Advance Environmental Monitoring for Agriculture, Climate and National Security

Environmental monitoring is critical for applications in agriculture, climate, pollution, national security and much more. To date, this is typically accomplished by manually sampling soil which does not scale effectively or accurately. Fieldstone’s CSO & co-founder Dr. Brandon Fields, has deep domain expertise coming from the leading synthetic biology lab at MIT led by Dr. Christopher Voigt. He will share how Fieldstone Bio is combining synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and advanced hyperspectral imaging for environmental monitoring at scale. 

Fieldstone Bio develops remote sensing and analysis solutions for agriculture, pollution, and national security. Using synthetic biology, they create the largest high-resolution ground truth dataset of chemical information in the environment to power AI-driven environmental surveillance tools. The company’s co-founder was featured in The New York Times article, “Changing the DNA of Living Things to Fight Climate Change,” which noted, “Dr. Voigt became a rock star of sorts in the fast-growing field of biological engineering — creating living systems that function in ways that do not already exist in nature.”

Dr. Brandon Fields, Co-Founder & CSO, is a synthetic biology expert with 15 years of expertise in molecular biology. He holds a Ph.D. in Genetics and has extensive experience developing imaging technologies to visualize cellular activity.
– Brandon Fields, Co-Founder & CSO at Fieldstone Bio

Keynote: Using AI to Quantify Movement, Boost Drug Efficacy and Improve Lives of People with Movement Disorders

Parkinson’s and movement disorders touch many lives, yet treatment success hinges on accurate symptom tracking. It’s a key to tailoring therapies, understanding progression and improving outcomes. DANNCE.AI is a new approach to the clinical exam that captures videos of patients and automatically analyzes them for evidence of neurological disease. Their AI-powered platform can also evaluate the efficacy of drugs for patients with neurological disorders.

DANNCE.AI originated at Harvard in 2016, when Dr. Tim Dunn and Dr. Jesse Marshall developed the platform to study movement circuits. Tim further advanced the technology at Duke, where he met Rob Baldoni, who now leads its commercialization. In August 2024, the team licensed DANNCE from Harvard and Duke to transition it from academic research to clinical use. The co-founders include Dr. Dunn (CSO), Dr. Marshall (Advisor), and CEO Rob Baldoni, recognized on Forbes' 30 Under 30 List 2025.
– Rob Baldoni, Co-Founder and CEO at DANNCE.AI

Keynote: Dr. Serge Belongie Will Enlighten Us With Computer Vision & Machine Learning Trends from Autoregressive Token Prediction to Agentic AI, Physics Engines and Much More

With new and ever larger multimodal models being announced seemingly every week, it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments in computer vision and machine learning. Dr. 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, will provide a brief overview of some of the key concepts behind these advances, including autoregressive next token prediction, diffusion models, agentic AI and physics engines.

Serge Belongie earned a B.S. in EE from Caltech (1995) and a Ph.D. in EECS from Berkeley (2000). He was a professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego (2001–2013) and co-founded Digital Persona (the first mass-market fingerprint ID device), Anchovi Labs (acquired by Dropbox), and Orpix (an image recognition framework). He was named to MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 in 2004 and has received multiple honors, including the Marr Prize Honorable Mention (2007), ICCV Helmholtz Prize (2015), NSF CAREER Award, and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. Serge has played a key role in organizing our Annual Summit since 2014. Check out our interview, “The Difference Is – Now The Whole World Is Paying Attention To AI.”
– Dr. 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

Additional sessions and specific times will be announced soon. RSVP to stay in the know.

Topics

We will discuss computer vision, computational imaging, machine learning and AI relating to the following sectors:
- Materials Science
- Agriculture & Food
- Circular Economy
- Holography (egocentric vision more broadly)
- Synthetic Biology
- Neuroscience
- Longevity
- Robotics

Who should attend?

» Computer Vision, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence experts, researchers, professors, students and professionals
» Media and brand executives interested in enhancing revenue through innovative imaging technologies & AI-powered products
» Investors looking for investment opportunities across all sectors
» Technology executives assessing companies for potential partnerships and acquisitions
» Journalists, reporters, editors: to get an update on all things visual tech and AI

Check out a few articles that relate to our 11th Summit:

• Visual Technologies Are Fueling the Transition To a Circular Economy

• Structuring a Sustainable Future: Visual Technology is Advancing the Discovery & Development of New Materials

• Meta’s Matt Uyttendaele on AI for Material Discovery

• Visual Data is the Crux of AI & Automation for the Future of All Industries

• Generative AI As A Utility Will Empower SaaS Businesses

Attendees & Speakers About Previous LDV Vision Summits

Stay tuned for a detailed agenda and more information about our speakers.