David Colleen

Born in the United States, Colleen attended Cornell University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture, business administration, and management in 1981.^[8]

After relocating to San Francisco, Colleen joined an architectural firm, where he specialized in designing commercial buildings.^[2] During that period, he adapted 2D drafting software, developed in the 1980s to create 3D design simulations.^[2] He later collaborated with Harley Wagner Integrated in West Michigan to expand his firm's outreach.^[2]

In 1991, Colleen founded Planet 9 and served as its CEO until 2016.^[1][9] Under his tenure, Planet 9 specialized in constructing 3D models of buildings, streets, and various structures, using textures from digitized photographs.^[3] The company modeled over 15 cities, including Austin, San Francisco, Tokyo, New York (city), and San Diego.^[1][3] The process involved capturing up to 2,000 photographs of a city, creating foundational models, and then integrating the images.^[3] The models used the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) for online navigation, requiring a VRML plug-in.^[3][10] In 1996, Planet 9 built a baseball park simulation based on the San Francisco Giants' plans.^[11][12] The company later created a prototype 3D conference room for SPS Payment and a VRML environment for Schlumberger.^[13][14] In the 1990s, Planet 9 was recognized as a leading company in the virtual reality sector.^[15]

In 1995, Colleen built VRML-based Virtual SOMA, a 3-D model of the SOuth of MArket Street in San Francisco, and showcased it at the Microsoft booth at the SigGraph conference.^[16][17] In 1997, he and his team developed Virtual Tokyo, a 3D representation of the Shinjuku district in Tokyo.^[2][18]

In 1999, Colleen gave a lecture at the Oklahoma City University, titled "Technology Builds Community".^[19]

In 2016, Colleen co-founded SapientX with Bruce Wilcox and Maclen Marvit.^[20] Prior to this, the founders had developed AI-driven, 3D, conversational characters in 2003, which were later incorporated into a Multiverse platform, RayGun, in 2008.^[20][4] In the same year, SapientX released public AI chatbots that mimicked the voices of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.^[4][21][22]