John Carmack is a pioneering software engineer who redefined 3-D gaming, ignited the modern VR renaissance, and now directs Keen Technologies toward artificial general intelligence.1 After decades of pushing the limits of hardware and algorithms at id Software and Oculus, he raised a $20 million seed round in 2022 and partnered with reinforcement-learning icon Richard Sutton in 2023 to build agents that learn from lifelong experience.23
From Games to Graphics Breakthroughs
Carmack's engines for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake introduced binary-space partitioning, light mapping, and other techniques that shaped real-time rendering.1 His open-sourcing philosophy turned these innovations into teaching tools for generations of graphics programmers.
Pursuit of Virtual Reality Frontiers
As CTO of Oculus (later Meta Reality Labs), Carmack delivered low-latency head tracking, TimeWarp reprojection, and mobile-class VR, culminating in the standalone Quest lineup.1 His uncompromising focus on performance and accessibility helped transform VR from niche demos into a consumer platform.
Building AGI at Keen Technologies
Leaving Meta to focus full-time on artificial general intelligence, Carmack founded Keen Technologies, secured top-tier backers, and laid out a roadmap centered on reinforcement learning in physically grounded environments.2 His 2025 "Upper Bound" talk showcased experiments with real-world Atari consoles and sequential multi-task learning as stepping-stones toward embodied, adaptable agents.45
Keen now operates as a six-person research group focused on lifelong reinforcement learning over commercial products. Carmack often discusses early missteps in low-level coding and avoiding cloud resources, noting their shift to PyTorch for rapid iteration. Current experiments use real Atari consoles with cameras and robotic joysticks to measure latency, transfer learning, and continuous adaptation. The team plans to open-source these hardware and software tools once polished.6