Brandon Maseda

Brandon Maseda is a serial San Diego–based founder working at the intersection of "Physical AI," computer vision, and immersive consumer technology. He began his career building and running theLIFT, an international innovation group he founded and led for roughly 12 years before it was acquired. At theLIFT, his teams designed and built interactive mobile, online, and retail experiences for major brands and emerging hardware platforms — including Apple's iAd, Qualcomm's Vuforia AR platform, Sony Corporation of America, and Leap Motion, as well as the retail startup WithMe (where he served as a VP of Retail Innovation).

In 2015 he co-founded Accel Robotics in San Diego alongside Marius Buibas (formerly director of engineering at Brain Corp) and Martin Cseh (a Harvard graduate). As CEO, Maseda built Accel into a deep-tech company developing a camera-based computer-vision and AI platform for autonomous, cashier-free "grab-and-go" retail — a competitor to Amazon Go. The company grew from two people in a small EvoNexus incubator office to around 60 employees across San Diego, Argentina, and Tokyo. Accel raised about $7M early on and then a $30M round in December 2019 led by SoftBank, with participation from New Ground Ventures, Toyo Kanetsu's corporate venture partnership, and RevTech Ventures (bringing total funding to roughly $37M). Maseda also led strategic partnership deals with the global innovation teams at Mastercard.

More recently, Maseda has moved deeper into immersive and AI hardware. He co-founded Eggscape Entertainment (also referenced as Eggscape Mixed Reality), a social-gaming studio for mixed-reality headsets, joining founders German Heller, Federico Heller, and Jorge Tereso (the team behind animation/VR studio 3DAR). His current primary venture is Valeron Corporation (Valeron.ai), a San Diego startup focused on Physical AI, where he is Co-Founder and CEO (alongside co-founder Matt Walker). Valeron's public-facing tagline echoes Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Maseda invests personally as an angel, deploying capital at the seed stage into companies that align with his operating background in AI, computer vision, robotics, and immersive consumer technology.

> Note: Maseda has not published a formal written investment thesis; the points above are inferred from his stated focus areas and operating history. Treat specific check-size and portfolio expectations as approximate.

• Stage: Early / seed-stage angel checks, consistent with founder-operator angel investing.
• Sectors: Strongly aligned with his own building experience — Physical AI, computer vision and machine learning, robotics and retail automation, AR/VR/mixed reality, and "breakthrough consumer experiences with new hardware technologies."
• What likely earns a yes: Deep-tech and hardware-enabled software where novel sensing/AI creates a differentiated consumer or retail experience — the pattern across theLIFT, Accel Robotics, Eggscape, and Valeron.
• Operator angle: As a multiple-time founder who has raised institutional rounds (SoftBank-led) and run distributed engineering teams, he brings hands-on product, computer-vision, and go-to-market/partnership experience (e.g., Mastercard, Qualcomm) rather than purely financial capital.