Company
Who Builds ACE
Games & Theory LLC is a Colorado-based technology company. We build the Agentic Conflict Engine (ACE), a commercial software platform for AI-powered conflict simulation.
Our founders are aerospace engineering professors at the University of Colorado Boulder. The technology behind ACE is patent-pending, invented by our founders at CU Boulder. We built it because we kept seeing the same problem: strategic decisions tested against a single scenario, when the question demanded a thousand.
Conceptual framework, no figures. Each layer visibly condenses from the one below.
Team
Dr. Marcus J. Holzinger
Principal / Chief Technologist
Hatfield Endowed Professor for Space Policy and Law, Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder. Patent co-inventor. 20+ years of space domain expertise. Has led over $25M in federally funded research as principal investigator.
Dr. Jay W. McMahon
Principal / Chief Operating Officer
Professor, Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder. Patent co-inventor. Expert in astrodynamics, AI/ML applications, and cislunar mission analysis. Has led over $10M in federally funded research as principal investigator.
Dr. Michael Klonowski
Founding Engineer, AI/Simulation Research Engineer
Full-time platform developer. LLM API integration, simulation architecture, and ACE platform development.
Built from First Principles
ACE was developed and validated on a ladder of games: canonical game theory (the prisoner's dilemma), a fast three-player variant of a classic territory-control board game, then multi-team, multi-player exercises adjudicated by an agentic white cell. The platform is general-purpose game-theory simulation software; military application arises from the scenarios customers bring to it, not from the software's design.
Partners and Affiliations
Each relationship below is stated as a matter of fact. No endorsement is implied.
Technology origin.
Commercial licensing partner.
State economic-development support.
Registrations
- CAGE Code: 13G06
- UEI: U2FEYZRY3JU5
- NAICS: 541715, 541611, 541330, 611710
- Small Business (SBA)
- Registered in SAM.gov
Every game is fictional. Every number is real.