Accelerating Visual Intelligence with the Power of AI: Inside Tad Mielnicki's Journey Building Larx

The amount of visual intelligence being collected by both public and private sector organizations is exploding. Modern satellites like Planet Labs collect 1.3 million images every day, and the drone surveillance market is expected to grow from $7.8B in 2024 to $28.6B by 2034. 

But while more visual data is being collected than ever before, analyzing this visual data remains highly manual. That means that teams have to do hours—if not weeks—of analysis before being able to make a strategic decision. 

With over a decade of experience both working on global security issues for the Department of Defense and founding companies in the defense tech space, Tad Mielnicki recognized that the advancing power of AI had the potential to transform how teams process visual intelligence. So he set out to build Larx and create a new way for analysts to uncover insights and navigate complex decisions.

Introducing Larx: The Visual Intelligence Platform for Geospatial Data

Larx is a visual intelligence platform that unifies all forms of visual data into a single AI-powered workspace. By enabling operators, analysts, and decision-makers to access a holistic geospatial dataset and query it with the power of AI, Larx makes it possible for teams to move from raw data to strategic decisions faster than ever. 

"The US government spends approximately $1 trillion annually purchasing hardware and data from satellites, drones, video surveillance, and remote sensing data," explains Tad. But because this data comes from multiple collection platforms, often each with its own proprietary system, analysts often need to juggle multiple tools to assess the complete data set. At the same time, most of these legacy tools require extensive training to bring users up to the technical level needed to operate them.

Larx offers a data type– and partner-agnostic system that makes it possible for teams to access their complete data set in a unified workspace designed for speed, clarity, and interoperability. It’s built on Orion, Larx’s proprietary language model, which enables teams to analyze images and videos at scale using natural language and automate workflows in a no-code environment. 

By bringing greater clarity and transparency to visual data, Larx is empowering teams to generate insights within the time frames necessary to have a strategic or operational effect.

Tad’s journey to Larx

After attending college in DC, Tad began his career at the Department of Defense, spending ten years working on counter-chemical weapons, counterterrorism, and counter-IED issues. 

But his journey changed when he attended a Dell Center for Entrepreneurs event in summer 2014. He had the chance to meet young founders working for themselves, raising funding, and designing products to change the world. He was inspired by the founders’ autonomy and flexibility, which was the opposite of the DoD’s hierarchical structure, and realized that he could have a greater impact by building technology companies to enable the next generation of national security operators. 

Soon after, Tad left the DoD to found his first company in the defense technology space, Second Front Systems. He would go on to launch several advisory firms, and help build the security program at data company Egnyte, before co-founding threat intelligence company Overwatch Data and taking it through Y Combinator. 

After exiting Overwatch in 2024, Tad set out to explore the ways in which AI could accelerate the power of visual data, leading to the development of Larx. Since launching publicly earlier this year, Larx is already partnering with numerous defense organizations across the US government and with a number of NATO allies. Larx is also beginning to explore partnerships with private firms across sectors like mining, telecommunications, and wildfire protection.

Tad’s advice for fellow founders

Throughout multiple experiences as a founder, Tad has learned that the personnel decisions you make at the beginning of the founder journey have a dramatically outsized impact on your future outcomes. 

The most important decision, he believes, is who you decide to build your company with. "Who you choose as co-founders and your early employees will be the most significant thing you do for your company,” Tad explains. “If you get those early hires right, you get those co-founders right, and you get the team culture right, then it gives you the foundation to build your business, and to build it successfully."

Great products with bad teams don’t always succeed in the long run, he notes. And bad products with bad teams almost never go far. But a great team, even with a bad product, Tad explains, will usually find a way to succeed.

With the right team in place, the next most important decision is choosing the right investors. “Who you choose as investors is incredibly important in the early days of any company. You're not just choosing capital allocators, but you're choosing partners to be in the trenches with you in the early days.”

To learn more about Tad’s journey, you can follow him on LinkedIn and visit larx.io.