Ideas beneath
the surface
Human Creativity at the Edge of the Digital World: Investing in Nuwa
Human originality and creativity are how we prosper in the age of AI, yet modern devices make it increasingly difficult to think with true originality. People do their most creative work when detached from screens, but complete disconnection is unrealistic in an information-driven world. We believe the next generation of creative tools will enable deep, analog thinking while seamlessly connecting that work back into digital workflows.
That’s why we invested in Nuwa via Deepwater Venture Fund II.
Nuwa is a San Francisco–based hardware company building a digital pen that transcribes handwritten notes into digital form. The product allows users to write, sketch, and explore ideas naturally on any sheet of paper while automatically porting that work into tools like Apple Notes, Notion, Google Workspace, and other productivity platforms. Nuwa has built a waitlist of more than 50,000 interested customers.
We believe the most valuable ideas in the AI era will be those that the models don’t already access, ideas generated through human creativity rather than algorithmic recombination. Nuwa is uniquely positioned to capture those ideas at their point of creation and help users bring them into the connected world where they can be refined and executed. Over time, the company also has the opportunity to leverage handwriting data (with user consent) to build a leading foundation model for handwriting, creating upside beyond consumer hardware alone.
Nuwa was founded by Marc Tuiner, an entrepreneur with deep experience in the digital pen ecosystem. He previously built an e-commerce business focused on digital pen accessories and has spent several years developing the Nuwa product alongside a small, long-tenured engineering team. We believe this domain expertise positions Nuwa well to build a category-defining creative tool.
Nuwa raised a pre-seed round, into which Deepwater Venture Fund II recently invested. The company will use the capital to finalize a production-ready product and begin converting its substantial waitlist into paying customers.