David Sokolic is a partner at Toyota Ventures, responsible for leading investments for the firm’s Frontier Fund. He is dedicated to discovering deep tech startups in areas like artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomy, and quantum computing.
Prior to Toyota Ventures, David was an investment partner at OurCrowd, working on deals in mobility and cybersecurity, and served as a vice president at Battery Ventures. David earned his bachelor of science degree in economics with honors from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
The generative AI boom captivated the market, but software eating the world was only phase one. The next massive value unlock is Physical AI, where intelligence safely interacts with the real world through robotics, mobility, and autonomous agents. While large language models have mastered the digital realm, translating cognitive capability into physical action introduces profound complexities. Unlike pure software, physical systems must contend with gravity, spatial reasoning, and chaotic human environments. These friction points present formidable challenges, but they also create deep competitive moats for the founders who solve them through seamless hardware-software convergence. Toyota Ventures recognized this structural market shift early, having backed companies working on these foundational building blocks of physical AI and automation since the firm’s founding in 2017. In this session, David Sokolic explores the transition from static digital outputs to real-world action. Drawing on deal-flow insights and lessons from Toyota Ventures’ pioneering deep-tech portfolio, David will break down what it takes to build, fund, and scale intelligent physical systems. He will highlight the most lucrative white-space opportunities for founders, and reveal why mastering real-world unpredictability is the key to capturing AI's next great market opportunity.
