Currently building Octoshift

Ace
Austin-Rugg

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17-year-old founder migrating the world off COBOL, also invested in ocean exploration and conservation.

AA
About

Building things
that matter

I've been writing code since I was 11. I started with making Roblox Studio and Unity games, taught myself ML with Data Science edX courses and self study before GPT-3.5 and the explosion of AI, and now I'm building companies that use AI to solve actual problems, migrating legacy enterprise systems and making ocean research actually accessible.

I run an ambitious open-source ocean nonprofit and a AI based migration company meant to kill COBOL. I like working on things that are way too big for one person.

01
Ventures

What I'm building

01UnfathomedFounder & Executive Director

Unfathomed

An open-source nonprofit making ocean research accessible to everyone. Aiming for high quality AI species identification, open data, affordable monitoring hardware, community training, and carbon credit infrastructure, with it all being open-source.

AI + Ocean Conservation
02OctoshiftFounder & CEO

Octoshift

Modernizing legacy COBOL systems that still power critical infrastructure. A deterministic orchestration platform that makes AI-driven migration actually work at scale.

AI + Enterprise Infrastructure
Previously

Where it started

2025-2026

MEP Vision Engine

Hybrid VLM + custom CV engine for interpreting MEP plan drawings. Outperforms existing solutions on the market.

Under M&AEngineering AI
2021 — 2025

Roblox Contract Work

Contracted as a scripter and 3D animator for front-page Roblox games. Anime Battlegrounds X, Age of Heroes (Ignite Games), and ETA Games.

1B+ combined visitsRoblox / Lua
2020 — 2022

Early Experiments

Passion project games, ML self-study through edX and independent study, small Discord bots. A bunch of fun projects.

Dozens of projectsPython / Lua / JS / C#
Archive

Let's talk

I'm always open to discussing new ventures, or just connecting with new people interested in the same things as me.

 
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