# Dave Grannan

> Dave Grannan is a San Francisco technology founder and executive who led Vlingo, co-founded computational-imaging company Light, and later co-founded Marr Labs. His work spans mobile software, speech recognition and machine vision. Marr Labs’ technology assets and key employees joined PayNearMe in September 2026.

- **Role:** Marr Labs co-founder; joined PayNearMe in September 2026
- **Organizations:** Marr Labs, PayNearMe, Light, Vlingo, Nuance Communications, Geoworks, Nokia, Sprint PCS, US Marine Corps, Maluuba, Sense, Sensory, Cognii
- **Education:** MBA, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
- **Known for:** Led Vlingo, whose speech technology supported early Siri products and Samsung S-Voice., Co-founded Light and brought the multi-camera L16 to customers., Served as chairman of Maluuba, subsequently acquired by Microsoft.

## Career timeline

- **Early career** — Served as a US Marine Corps officer.
- **1994** — Earned an MBA at Berkeley Haas.
- **1999** — Led Geoworks when Amazon invested $5 million for a seven percent stake.
- **2007** — Became CEO of mobile speech-recognition company Vlingo.
- **2011** — Nuance announced an agreement to acquire Vlingo in December.
- **2012** — Served as a Nuance vice president, discussing Dragon Mobile Assistant.
- **2013** — Co-founded Light with Rajiv Laroia.
- **2015** — Light announced the L16 camera.
- **2017** — Light L16 reached customers.
- **2022** — Deere acquired Light-related depth-sensing and perception technology.
- **2023** — Co-founded Marr Labs.
- **2024** — Marr Labs participated in Y Combinator Winter 2024.
- **2026** — Marr Labs technology assets and key employees joined PayNearMe in September.

## Achievements

- Led Vlingo, whose speech technology supported early Siri products and Samsung S-Voice.
- Co-founded Light and brought the multi-camera L16 to customers.
- Served as chairman of Maluuba, subsequently acquired by Microsoft.
- Co-founded Marr Labs, a Y Combinator Winter 2024 company.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — PayNearMe announced on September 9 that it acquired Marr Labs technology assets and hired key employees, including the founders.
- **2025-04** — Discussed mortgage voice-agent use cases, flexible calling capacity and escalation to human staff in an industry webinar.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grannan
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/grannan

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/dave-grannan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-23