David Holz

David Holz grew up in South Florida and studied applied mathematics and physics at Florida Atlantic University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducting fluid dynamics research for NASA and the Max Planck Institute. In 2010, he co-founded Leap Motion, pioneering optical hand-tracking hardware for computers and virtual reality.

David Holz is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Midjourney, Inc. A polymath, mathematician, and spatial computing pioneer, Holz spent a decade leading Leap Motion before founding Midjourney in 2021 as a self-funded independent research lab. Holz rejected Silicon Valley venture capital, bootstrapped Midjourney to over $200 million in ARR with positive cash flow, designed the well-known Discord community co-creation interface, and engineered the aesthetic diffusion models that define modern generative visual art. Holz is universally recognized as one of the most effective, uncompromising, and philosophically grounded leaders of the artificial intelligence revolution.\n\nHolz's radical intellectual independence, philosophical depth, and unyielding refusal of venture capital made him a well-known, heroic figure in the modern technology world. Rejecting corporate sanitization, Holz steered Midjourney to over $200 million in bootstrapped ARR with a team of fewer than 100 people, turning a small research lab into a $10B+ cultural leader that redefined visual creativity for millions of artists across the globe.