ERIC KERN

Inventor. Builder. Founder.

I've spent my life turning emerging technologies into things people can actually use.

30 years at IBM & Lenovo125+ inventionsDistinguished EngineerAI · Systems · StartupsDetroit, Michigan

Inventor · Builder · Founder

Turning emerging technology into things people can actually use.

Thirty years of systems, silicon, and scale at IBM and Lenovo — and a patent portfolio to match. Today: AI systems architecture, agentic infrastructure, and companies I build hands-on.

30 plus years
Years in technology: 125 plus inventions
Inventions: 3 active builds
Active builds

What I'm building Inventions Technical work Story

What I'm building now

Three active builds. One of them gets most of my week.

BuildingFounder

ZerothGuard

AI-powered autonomous cybersecurity for individuals and small businesses.

Visit site

Also building

BuildingFounder

Anything vs. Anything

A platform exploring human opinion, voting, comparison, and consensus.

ActiveFounder

Lincoln Consulting

Eric's technology and AI consulting company.

If one of these is close to something you're building, the fastest path is a conversation.

Eric in action

Builder. Speaker. Convener.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern giving a keynote to a large arena audience — On stage
Talking technology to big rooms.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern assembling a robotic arm — Building robots
Hands on the hardware.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern speaking to a crowd at a tech meetup — Bringing people together
Founders, engineers, builders.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern walking through a tech expo flanked by two robot security guards — Walking the expo floor
With a little robotic security.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern running through downtown Washington DC with a crowd and reporters — Running D.C.
The crowd behind, the press alongside.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern steering a large sailboat on the ocean — At the helm
Sixty-five feet of open water.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern standing at a desk with three curved monitors, Detroit River at night behind him and a telescope beside him — Command deck
33 floors above the Detroit River.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern standing beside his 4-foot MOXIE humanoid robot in a high-rise apartment overlooking Detroit — With MOXIE
Home on the 33rd floor, Detroit to the west.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern hiking along the rim of a steaming volcano — On the crater rim
Hiking volcanoes.

AI-generated image of Eric Kern taking a punch to the chin from a large humanoid boxing robot in a boxing ring — Sparring the machine
Taking one on the chin from a boxing robot.

Open-source hardware · Apache-2.0

MOXIE

A 610 mm research humanoid I designed and released as open source — 32 powered joints, five-toe adaptive feet, a Jetson Orin NX brain and a hot-swappable M18 battery.

Explore the design →

iOS app · Secret development

Spectre

A ghost-hunting iPhone app for field investigation — baselining a room, then flagging physical readings that depart from it. Being used in the field at the Airbnbs I stay at when I travel.

See how it works →

Imagined futures

The future I like to think about

A human engineer and a humanoid robot working together at a workbench — Humans + robots
Building side by side.

Humanoid robots in a dark high-tech laboratory — Robots
Machines that move through our world.

Futuristic city skyline at sunset with flying vehicles — Future cities
Infrastructure that thinks.

Rocket on a launch pad at a spaceport at night — Spaceports
Launch as routine as flight.

Moon colony domes with Earth rising on the horizon — Moon colonies
Systems that keep people alive off-world.

The map

How the work connects.

Eras, invention themes, technical domains, and current builds — every node links to the page where it is documented.

Short film

A short film about the work

A 15-second cinematic short built around Eric's verified technical themes — inventions, agentic AI, and systems at scale. Not documentary footage; there is no spoken narration.

Open the film directly (MP4)