Andor Kesselman

Multi-founder CTO with 10+ years taking AI and multi-agent systems from zero to production. Co-founded HiJenny, one of 10 companies selected from 45,000 applications (a 0.02% acceptance rate) to HF0 (W26), the world's most exclusive incubator. Raised $7M ($4.5M of it in 2 weeks), built a 27+ person company with 15+ engineers, and put 1,000+ homes on the platform. Founding engineer through acquisition at Pathr.ai, and technical advisor through acquisition at Losci. Founder and chair of agent-trust standards at the Decentralized Identity Foundation.

• ✓Selected for HF0 W26: 10 slots from 45,000 applications, a 0.02% acceptance rate.
• ✓Built HiJenny's engineering org to 15+ engineers (27+ company) and raised $7M ($4.5M in 2 weeks), bringing in $1M+ from my own network.
• ✓Brought in HiJenny's Lowe's partnership, a key partnership for the fundraise and our competitive moat.
• ✓Architected an AI calling system capable of millions of calls per hour, with human operator controls.
• ✓Built an AI intern program from scratch: 3 converted to full-time engineers (all master's and PhD grads), and alumni went on to NVIDIA, Wasmer, and others. Graduates recommended it to their friends, creating a recruiting flywheel.
• ✓Two exits as an early technical leader: Pathr.ai and Losci, both acquired.
• ✓Founded DIF's Trusted AI Agents WG; chaired DIF's Technical Steering Committee 2023–2026.

1. HiJennyCo-Founder & CTOHF0 W26
   Jan 2026 – present · San Francisco
   • Lead a 15+ engineer team in a 27+ person company, including building a 10+ person team in Poland. Raised $7M, with $4.5M in 2 weeks and $1M+ brought in from my own network.
   • AI personal assistant for homes and families covering tasks, inventory, home services, and renovation. Shipped the iOS app; 1,000+ homes on the platform.
   • AI calling system capable of millions of calls per hour, with human operator controls.
   • Home-specific context and reasoning layer built on ontology and topology. Computer vision, voice pipelines, duplex models, agentic orchestration, delegation frameworks, human in the loop, RL, voice-first evals.
   • Brought in the Lowe's partnership, key to the fundraise and our competitive moat.
   • Part of the xAI Startup Program.
2. Agent OverlayFounder & CEO
   Jun 2025 – Jan 2026 · Palo Alto
   • Built a runtime agentic policy decision point (PDP) that decides, live, what an AI agent may do. Worked closely with agentic gateway technology.
   • Secured key paying clients across multiple contracts, then moved to co-found HiJenny on a venture-backed opportunity.
3. Andor LabsFractional CTO
   Jul 2023 – Jul 2024
   • Built the Ayra Association (ayra.forum), an international trust organization, from the ground up alongside another CTO, and led its technical workstream.
   • Stabilized engineering and product for early-stage startups; technical due diligence for M&A.
4. Benri.ioCo-Founder & CTO
   Feb 2022 – Jan 2024
   • Decentralized, portable data stores. Built Decentralized Web Node tooling (SSI Console, featured on TBD's developer blog) and a Web5 protocol registry.
5. Pathr.aiFounding Engineer (ML) → Principal Engineer; led engineeringAcquired
   Mar 2019 – Jan 2023
   • Spatial intelligence platform. Built the ML pipelines, then led engineering through SensorLayer v1 and v2.
6. LosciTechnical AdvisorAcquired
   Jan 2021 – Jan 2023
   • Retail digital twin built on my technology. Advised the team through acquisition.
7. Henosisknot LLCAI / Engineering Consultant
   Mar 2017 – 2021
8. RetailNextCustomer Experience Analyst → R&D Engineer
   2014 – 2017 · San Jose
   • Helped launch Aurora, an edge camera that processed human patterns at the edge.

• Decentralized Identity Foundation: Trusted AI Agents WG, Founder & Chair (2025–) · DIF Labs, Founder & Chair: started DIF's lab for experimentation (2024–26) · Technical Steering Committee Chair (2023–26) · Decentralized Web Node WG Chair (2022–25)
• Trust Over IP: Trust Registry Task Force Chair (2023–26)
• Ayra Association: Lead of Technical Workstream (2024–25)
• Agentic Internet Workshop: Co-Founder (2025–)
• Project NANDA: Bay Area Chapter (2025–26)

• Inventor of R-K Diagrams (independent research): A Novel Approach to Topological Graph Theory with R-K Diagrams and Gravitational Wave Analysis (arXiv 2201.06923)
• AI Agents x Law, Stanford CodeX (2025)
• AI Agent Unconference, organizer (2024)

• Claremont McKenna College: B.A., Science, Technology & Society and Public Policy Analysis (2011–2014)
• MicroMasters in Artificial Intelligence
• Towards Agentic Intelligence: Architectures for Multi-Agent AI Systems

Leadership:

0→1 engineering orgs, building competitive AI-focused teams, R&D, hiring, fundraising, M&A diligence

AI:

multi-agent systems, voice and duplex models, computer vision, RL, evals

Trust:

identity, delegation, runtime policy

Stack:

Go, Python, TypeScript, Rust, GCP/AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform

English (native) · Japanese (limited working) · Kannada (elementary)