Ryker Phoenix · Strategy · AI Systems · Engineering
Twenty years taking control of programs that had to work. Ryker Phoenix brings that command to companies facing the same stakes.
Founder & Principal
Ted Kinney
Founder & Principal
Nuclear plants, eight-figure recoveries, multinational charters, and AI systems built from scratch. Ted Kinney has spent twenty years taking command of programs that had to work, and negotiating with the people who own the other side of the table.
The Record
Eight-figure programs, organizations in the thousands, and missions with no second attempt.
A catastrophic fire destroyed the superstructure of a $93M industrial vessel. Took operational command of the 180-person engineering organization, directed the contractor recovery, and carried the vessel through every recertification back to full operations.
Inherited a national deep-ocean operations program with its budget cut in half and its system idle for years. Originated new outside funding, restored operations, and took it global.
End-to-end ownership of an eight-figure industrial overhaul: scope, solicitation, source selection, contractor oversight, and certified delivery.
Already adjudicated. Transfers to a sponsoring program without a new 12–18 month investigation.
Scheduled and coordinated a nuclear industrial workforce across 11 trades, 4 labor unions and 3 drydocks, under regulatory oversight.
Helping lead defense AI modernization across the maintenance enterprise, while building production AI systems of his own.
The Scale of Command
23 people. 43 days at sea.
180 people. A $93M recovery.
6,000 people. One schedule.
An offshore support vessel chartered in Singapore, a complete deep-sea system aboard, and a South China Sea transit to a recovery site off Papua New Guinea.
The Negotiator
Contracts decide whether programs succeed. He has negotiated directly with CEOs and ownership of multibillion-dollar enterprises in defense, offshore energy and technology, and held sole allocation authority over tens of millions in contract spend.
Offshore charter
Flew to the owner's headquarters and negotiated face to face with the family ownership of a multibillion-dollar fleet operator, while oil majors were paying far more.
International charter
Below the going rate
Sourced a foreign-flagged subsea construction vessel in Singapore and contracted it for a 43-day deep-ocean mission, below the going rate.
Cross-border contracting
Contracts executed in North America, Asia and Australia, including foreign-flag vessel operations and U.S. cabotage (Jones Act) constraints.
What we do
Scattered workstreams. No owner. No date.
Services
Three ways to engage. Each one is backed by work we have already done at scale.
For programs that are late, over budget or leaderless, and companies that need a senior operator now. We step in, tell you where it really stands, reset the plan, and run it to delivery.
Getting AI into a working business without breaking delivery: where it pays, which vendors are real, contracts with enforceable outcomes, and the guardrails (spend limits, approval gates, audit trails) that keep it safe.
We build it with you: personal assistant agents, agent teams, live dashboards and connectors to the tools you already run (QuickBooks, Google Analytics, email, calendar) in one place.
Also in the toolkit
The Builder
Most advisors evaluate AI from the outside. Ted designs and ships production AI systems, directing teams of AI models the way he directs engineering teams, with governance built in from day one: spending limits, human approval gates, and tamper-evident audit trails.
Secure desktop platforms that coordinate several frontier AI models, with encrypted credentials and a hard ceiling on spend.
Codebases of 200,000+ lines, training sets of hundreds of thousands of records, and strict gates a model must pass before it goes live.
Agent teams that read live market data every day, test ideas on paper first, and only change a rule after it holds up on fresh data.
Several AI models researching, cross-checking and citing one another, packaged as research databases for legal, engineering and diligence teams.
One private dashboard for email, calendar, bills, travel and the business, kept current by agents and protected by a single sign-in.
Full-stack systems with payments, IoT device control and dynamic pricing, deployed in weeks.
Everything we recommend, we've built.
The Ryker Phoenix Standard
Not a framework. These are the commitments we hold ourselves to on every engagement, and that you can hold us to.
We take ownership of the outcome, not just the advice. You get a leader who answers for the date.
A candid, written diagnostic of where the program actually stands, along with the plan to recover it.
Requirements and vendor terms that hold up once the demo is over and the deliverable is late.
New systems are put into live operations without stopping the business that pays for them.
We hand off a trained team, a working rhythm, and no dependency on us.
Case Files
Selected work, told plainly: the situation, the stakes, and the result.
An exhaust leak ignited in a machinery space and the fire melted the superstructure of a $93M industrial vessel down to the main deck, with no one newly aboard qualified to run it. He took command of the 180-person engineering recovery, oversaw the contractors doing the rebuild, and for 18 months personally ran every high-risk operation until the vessel passed every certification and returned to service.
He inherited a national deep-ocean operations program after a 50% budget cut, with its system idle for years. He originated a $20M, five-year federal ocean-science agreement and $6M in federal recovery-mission funding, negotiated vessel charters up to 60% below market, and returned the system to global operations.
Chartered an offshore support vessel in Singapore, loaded a complete deep-sea system, and transited the South China Sea to a recovery site off Papua New Guinea: 23 people, 43 days at sea. The mission brought home eight WWII service members.
Full ownership of an eight-figure industrial overhaul, from scope through solicitation, source selection and contractor oversight to certified delivery, while standing up a first-of-its-kind enterprise planning function.
Case Study · Automation Build
A founder buried in admin, rebuilt around agents.
Before
After
Nothing goes out under the client's name without approval. Every spend over a set limit comes back to a human.
Your Situation
Pick the situation closest to yours and see what the first ninety days look like.
Recommended engagement
We take the program over, tell you where it really stands, and get it back to delivery.
Founder & Principal
Ted Kinney is the founder and principal of Ryker Phoenix, a strategy, AI systems and engineering firm that takes command of the programs organizations can't afford to lose.
For twenty years he has worked where engineering, money and people collide. He started on the plant floor as a nuclear plant operator and rose to lead eight-figure programs: the $93 million recovery of a fire-destroyed industrial vessel, a 6,000-person nuclear industrial enterprise, and the turnaround of a national deep-ocean operations program he took from a halved budget to $26 million in new funding and global operations. Along the way he held sole authority over tens of millions in contract spend and negotiated face to face with the owners of multibillion-dollar enterprises on three continents.
An executive rotation inside a multi-trillion-dollar technology company put him at the center of AI supplier onboarding, AI-datacenter engineering and divestiture work. Today he helps lead defense AI modernization, and he builds production AI systems of his own, so the advice clients get comes from someone who ships.
He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School and an MBA from Arizona State University.
“The same discipline applies whether the question is a reactor plant, a contract, or an AI system: will it hold?”
The Film
The story behind Ryker Phoenix: the programs, the stakes, and the standard we bring to every engagement.
▼ 475 FT · Operating depth reached
Every engagement starts with a short, confidential briefing. We'll tell you plainly whether we're the right fit.
Ryker Phoenix
Strategy · AI Systems · Engineering
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