Dave Citron joins Niantic Spatial as Chief Product Officer
Former Google DeepMind and Microsoft AI product leader joins Niantic Spatial to scale spatial AI models and services that let machines reason, learn, and act in the physical world.
We’re thrilled to announce that Dave Citron is joining Niantic Spatial tomorrow as Chief Product Officer. Dave joins from Microsoft AI, where he was Corporate Vice President of Product on the Superintelligence team. He brings more than two decades of experience building and scaling products for both consumers and enterprises, from early-stage ideas to global platforms.
At Microsoft AI, Dave helped build and launch Microsoft’s first frontier foundation models, spanning image, voice, transcription, reasoning, coding, and security. They now run in production across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, GitHub Copilot, Bing and Microsoft Foundry, where enterprise customers can tune MAI models on their own workflows and own the result.
At Google DeepMind, Dave helped scale the Gemini app to hundreds of millions of monthly users by turning frontier model capabilities into products people use, like Connectors, Deep Research, Guided Learning, Veo, Nano Banana, and Canvas. He also led Gemini’s expansion into business, enterprise and education, reaching millions of businesses and schools.
"Dave has spent his career doing exactly what we need most -- taking products from early stage to scale, and building the supporting enterprise infrastructure to support them. That track record and his experience building AI-native products at two of the world's leading AI labs are the perfect fit for what we’re building at Niantic Spatial at the forefront of physical AI.” Inhi Cho Suh, CEO, Niantic Spatial
“AI is remarkably good at reading and writing, but it still doesn't understand the physical world well enough to act in it safely. Niantic Spatial has the research, the data, and the commercial traction to close that gap and become the spatial layer for physical AI. That's the work I've spent my career preparing for and I couldn't be more excited to be joining the team at such an exciting time.” Dave Citron, Chief Product Officer, Niantic Spatial
Earlier at Google, Dave grew Google Meet to more than 450 million monthly users and scaled Google Duo from early stage to 120 million daily active users and 3 billion installs. Dave began his career at Microsoft, where he helped take OneDrive from its first release to more than 200 million monthly users, and eventually led its enterprise and infrastructure products.
Dave arrives as Niantic Spatial continues to build out spatial AI models and services so machines can reason, learn and act in the 80% of the global economy that operates beyond the reach of screens. The company’s services help embodied AI learn visual-spatial intelligence, deliver intelligent field operations in industrial settings, and provide a combined operating picture for the public sector and defense industry. Publicly announced strategic partners include Coco Robotics, Flexion, Vantor, and Spexi.