Alex de Vigan, Founder and CEO at Nfinite – Interview Series | By The Digital Insider

Nfinite, a company he established in 2016 after encountering challenges while decorating his first apartment. Nfinite transforms the online shopping experience by offering retailers and brands AI-powered, immersive, engaging, and personalized visual content at scale.

What inspired you to transition from law and financial services to founding Nfinite, a company focused on e-merchandising and spatial intelligence?

My background in law and financial services provided me with valuable insights into business operations and market inefficiencies. However, I was drawn to the transformative potential of technology in the retail sector. I noticed that retailers faced significant challenges with traditional product photography—it was costly, time-consuming, and lacked scalability. This inspired me to found Nfinite, focusing initially on helping retailers by producing high-quality visuals using a mix of 3D modeling and AI. Over time, our expertise in generating large volumes of enriched 3D data led us to explore opportunities in spatial AI, collaborating with tech and AI companies to drive the next leap in artificial intelligence. As Nfinite evolved, we realized the potential to go beyond 2D imagery, moving toward creating vast, spatially enriched 3D datasets that will power the future of AI, enabling models to understand and generate not just pixels but entire environments.

What gaps did you identify in the market that led to the creation of the company?

When Nfinite was founded, e-commerce was expanding rapidly, but the tools for creating product visuals were lagging behind. Traditional photography couldn’t keep up with the demand for speed, customization, and flexibility. Retailers needed a way to produce and adapt visuals quickly, across multiple contexts, without sacrificing quality. Nfinite addressed this gap by using 3D modeling to generate photorealistic product visuals that were scalable and easy to customize. As we refined our methods, it became clear that these high-quality visuals weren’t just beneficial for retailers but could also serve broader AI applications, particularly in creating large, structured datasets for AI training.

How does Nfinite leverage AI and spatial intelligence to create its extensive library of photorealistic 3D assets?

Our journey began with producing 3D models tailored for retailers, leveraging a mix of 3D modeling and, more recently, AI to generate vast amounts of photorealistic content efficiently. Recently, we’ve expanded our capabilities by integrating spatial intelligence. While our retail clients benefit from some of this technology, such as our new SceneMagic AI feature, which generates photorealistic lifestyle imagery starting from simple 2D packshots, our investments and research in spatial AI are largely aimed at broader use cases. SceneMagic AI is a perfect example of our expertise in 3D, allowing us to create entire environments with precise proportions, lighting, shadows, and perspectives—a process we call 3D-controlled diffusion.

In what ways do Nfinite’s AI-driven product visuals differ from traditional synthetic imagery?

Our AI-driven visuals go beyond standard synthetic imagery by combining realism with flexibility. Traditional synthetic images often lack detail and customization potential, but our photorealistic 3D models offer high-quality, dynamic visuals that can be easily adapted for different contexts. Initially created for retailers, these models are now being enriched with spatial metadata, making them suitable for advanced AI applications like spatial intelligence. This versatility makes our assets unique, serving both commercial retail needs and cutting-edge AI development.

Could you explain the role of human designers in your proprietary process of creating 3D visual assets? How important is the human touch in a tech-heavy solution?

While our technology relies heavily on automation and AI, human designers play a critical role in ensuring that the final output meets our high standards of quality and creativity. Designers add the nuanced details that make our visuals truly photorealistic and aesthetically engaging. For retailers, this human touch ensures the visuals align with brand aesthetics and consumer expectations. As we move into the spatial AI space, our designers continue to ensure that even the most technically complex visuals are user-friendly and visually compelling.

How are Nfinite’s 3D assets being used by retailers to enhance e-commerce, marketing, and in-store merchandising? Could you provide examples of successful use cases?

Retailers use our 3D assets to create more immersive and interactive shopping experiences. For instance, a customer can change the color of a product or view it in different environments directly on the website. This customization has led to higher engagement and increased conversion rates. A notable example is our work with Lowe’s and Costco, where our photorealistic 3D models have helped reduce photography costs while enabling faster product updates and more flexible merchandising options across e-commerce platforms.

How do Nfinite’s 3D datasets assist in AI model training for enterprise use cases?

Our enriched 3D datasets, combined with spatial metadata, provide essential training data for AI models used in industries like augmented reality, robotics, and beyond. These datasets enable AI models to better understand and navigate three-dimensional environments, offering a foundation for applications in fields such as visual search, object recognition, and autonomous systems. The structured data we provide accelerates AI training and improves performance by allowing models to interact with detailed spatial environments.

Spatial intelligence is a rapidly growing field. What are your thoughts on where this technology is heading, particularly in the context of AI advancements like Fei-Fei Li’s World Lab?

Spatial intelligence will fundamentally change how AI systems understand and interact with the world. Innovations from initiatives like Fei-Fei Li’s World Lab indicate that AI will soon be able to grasp spatial relationships and contexts more deeply, enhancing its ability to create immersive digital experiences. Nfinite’s focus on creating enriched 3D datasets positions us well to contribute to this shift. Our expertise allows us to produce spatially aware data that will help train the next generation of AI models, making them more capable of interpreting complex, real-world environments.

How do you see the evolution of AI in product visualization, especially as it relates to trends in synthetic data and spatial intelligence?

AI is transforming product visualization from a static, one-dimensional process into something much more dynamic, interactive, and immersive. While we began by addressing retail’s need for dynamic product visuals, we now see broader opportunities thanks to the rise of spatial intelligence. We envision AI-driven visual experiences that allow consumers to interact with products in more personalized and immersive ways. In the near future, there is a strong likelihood that customers will experience tailor-made visual content depending on their specific needs and behaviors.

Nfinite has secured significant funding and worked with major retailers. What are your next steps for growth, and how do you plan to scale the company in the coming years?

Our immediate goal is to continue supporting our retail clients by refining and expanding our 3D visualization solutions. However, our long-term growth strategy lies in spatial AI. We are investing in building large datasets enriched with spatial metadata, partnering with tech companies to develop AI models that can understand and generate 3D environments. Scaling Nfinite will involve growing our team, investing in research and development, and building partnerships to drive innovation both in retail and AI applications. By doing so, we aim to be at the forefront of the spatial intelligence revolution.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Nfinite.


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