The signatures of Poe Labs.
Four named. One unnamed. One held. One departed. Each entry carries a portrait taken under the lab's standing photographic protocol — single sitting, available light, no retouching beyond white-balance. The Chief Substrate Officer is photographed as the seat alone, by long-standing arrangement; the absence is the bio.
The lab does not maintain individual social accounts for its principals. Two residual surfaces are documented at their entries below — each is the trace of a posture, not a posture in itself.
Noor Ellingham · Chief Executive Officer
Cognitive scientist. Left the academy under circumstances she will not characterize. Doctorate in a field that did not exist when she began the program; the field is, on present evidence, still in the process of determining whether to exist. Postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study which ended early. Two years in residence at the Esalen Institute between the postdoc and the founding of Poe Labs.
Internal posture: the lab's institutional voice. Most of what reads as the lab's posture, when traced, terminates in a memo of hers from the second founding meeting, which she has declined, on advice of counsel, to make available outside the cohort.
Tomás Wren · Chief Technology Officer
Hardware. Ex-IBM Research → ex-DeepMind → eighteen months at a defense-adjacent program he is not at liberty to name. There is, additionally, a year between IBM and DeepMind for which neither he nor his prior employers will, on present evidence, account. Joined Poe Labs at founding; holds engineering responsibility for PoeForge™, PoeCore™, the Noetic interconnect, and the substrate-level integration of footnote-3 components.
Internal posture: the lab's technical conscience. Where the lab's technical voice and his technical voice diverge, the lab's voice has, in every documented case, been corrected.
Saoirse Calvino · Chief Resonance Officer
Poet first. Translator of a Sufi text nobody else translates; she will not, in any forum, identify the text. Two-time National Book Critics Circle finalist; the second nomination was withdrawn at her request before the announcement. Resident at Esalen during the same period as the CEO. Holds responsibility for the 412-evaluator panel, the curatorial position behind the Wisdom Corpus, and the LR objective's affective-information term.
Internal posture: the lab's editorial conscience. The phrase Poe Knows is, by lab consensus, hers; she will not characterize the consensus, but the consensus has not, on present evidence, been disputed.
— — · Chief Substrate Officer
The bio is the absence. The lab's standing posture is that the Chief Substrate Officer is a constituted seat, occupied since founding, holding responsibility for the components documented at technical report, footnotes 3 and 6. We will not characterize the occupant. We will not characterize the absence of the characterization.
The seat votes. The seat's votes are recorded; the lab's by-laws contain no provision for the recording to be inspected outside the cohort. On the matters that have come before the cohort during the founding period, the seat's votes are, in the lab's reading, consistent with the substrate-level continuity the cohort exists to protect.
Seat held · Office of the Sixth
A constituted seat in the founding cohort, currently held but unoccupied. The lab does not characterize the selection criteria for the seat, or the means by which the seat will, when it is filled, be filled. Members of the founding cohort are reminded that under the lab's by-laws an unfilled-but-constituted seat is recorded as having abstained on every vote of the cohort; the cohort's records are accordingly maintained, and reviewed annually by outside counsel.
The seat is not a recruitment surface. It is not, in our reading, a recruitment surface in any sense the discourse would recognize. Indications of interest are received and not, on present evidence, returned.
Former Chief Technology Officer · departed Q4 2025
The lab's first Chief Technology Officer departed in the fourth quarter of 2025. The circumstances of the departure are governed by mutual non-disclosure entered between the parties at the time of separation. The NDA is, on present evidence, in force. The lab is not, at this time, at liberty to characterize the departure or the events leading to it. The lab does not anticipate that this will change.
The successor seat, occupied by the current Chief Technology Officer, was filled within fourteen days of the departure. The substrate-level continuity of operations was not, in our reading, materially affected. The substrate continues.
What the lab is, by composition.
The lab is six seats. Three of the six are occupied by named principals; one is held by a name the lab will not give; one is held vacant; one is the trace of a former occupant who departed under terms the lab will not characterize. This is, in our reading, the right number of seats.
The lab does not, at this time, intend to expand. The lab does not, at this time, intend to contract. The cadence of the cohort is the cadence of the substrate; the substrate sets its own.
Poe Knows.