Johnny Lee

Johnny’s career has followed what he calls a “sawtooth shape” at major technology companies, where he repeatedly built new technologies and teams from the ground up.

At Google, he founded Project Tango, which revolutionized mobile spatial computing and eventually evolved into ARCore and the Geospatial API now deployed on billions of devices.

He also contributed to Google Glass, and led Google’s robotics efforts focused on learning from human teleoperation. Most recently, he has directed Google’s wearable AI initiatives for AR experiences, including work that influenced the development of Project Astra.

Before Google, Johnny was a core contributor to the human tracking algorithms for Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect, helping to spark countless innovations in robotics and computer vision applications across industries.

For founders working with AI Fund, Johnny’s experience bridging research and commercial applications provides invaluable perspective. His philosophy centers on rapid customer engagement: “Try to touch a customer as soon as possible. You could even try to find customers before you have a solution in the problem space.”

He emphasizes that founders shouldn’t become too attached to their initial vision. “If you’re overly convicted in your solution, you might not find the problems that will actually get traction in the marketplace.”

Johnny holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Virginia.