WHAT WE DO
Empowering Millions Through Adaptive AI EdTech
Born and built in Torrance, California, MMPOWER (Empower) AI was created with a simple mission: Use artificial intelligence to expand opportunity, strengthen people, and help close the digital skills divide.
MMPOWER AI combines proprietary adaptive AI education, workforce development training, and Assistive Therapeutic Intelligence (ARTI) to create learning experiences that are personalized, supportive, and built for real-world impact. Created with a simple belief: advanced technology should create opportunity for everyone. We are building the next generation of innovative EdTech by combining artificial intelligence, neuroadaptive learning, and human-centered design to create more personalized, engaging, and accessible learning experiences.
Our technology adapts to different learning styles, abilities, experiences, and goals helping people build skills, confidence, and digital fluency at their own pace. Through our proprietary Neuroadaptive Learning Framework™ and Artificial Therapeutic Intelligence (ARTI™), MMPOWER AI creates supportive learning environments designed around both individual growth and real-world outcomes.
Engineering a More Inclusive Future
HOW WE DO IT
Human Talent with Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence Anchored by Human Talent
We believe the future of education isn't AI replacing instructors—it's AI empowering them. MMPOWER AI™ gives instructors and organizations intelligent tools designed to help them better understand, engage, and support each learner while keeping human connection, mentorship, professional expertise, and lived experience at the center of the educational process.
Our technology is built with purpose. By bringing advanced AI-powered education, adaptive learning, and intelligent support tools to communities and organizations that can benefit from them most, MMPOWER AI™ is working to narrow the digital skills divide and create meaningful pathways to education, employment, independence, and long-term success.
Our approach combines the scalability and personalization of artificial intelligence with something technology cannot replace: human talent, human judgment, and human connection.
Built to Redefine Responsible-AI Standards
Responsible AI isn't an added feature at MMPOWER AI™—it's integrated into how our technology is designed, developed, and deployed.
Our human-centered approach incorporates the proprietary Advanced GuardRAIL Framework™, a layered responsibility architecture designed to strengthen safety, accountability, transparency, human oversight, and appropriate AI interaction across MMPOWER AI™ programs.
Every MMPOWER AI™ EdTech deployment is designed around a hybrid human + AI model, combining advanced AI tools with instructors, professionals, program operators, and organizational oversight. This approach allows technology to enhance human capability rather than replace it.
From adaptive education and workforce development to assistive therapeutic support, our goal is to build AI systems that organizations can deploy with greater confidence while keeping people firmly at the center.
Human-led. AI-enabled. Purpose-built.
WHY WE DO IT
MMPOWER AI was created with a simple belief: advanced technology should create opportunity for everyone. We are building the next generation of innovative EdTech by combining artificial intelligence, neuroadaptive learning, and human-centered design to create more personalized, engaging, and accessible learning experiences.
Our technology adapts to different learning styles, abilities, experiences, and goals helping people build skills, confidence, and digital fluency at their own pace. Through our proprietary Neuroadaptive Learning Framework and Artificial Therapeutic Intelligence (ARTI™), MMPWR AI creates supportive learning environments designed around both individual growth and real-world outcomes.
Empowering People Through Purpose Driven Innovation
Our Mission is in Our Name.
MMPOWER AI
We are Built to Empower
MILLIONS
WHO WE ARE
WHO WE ARE
Gary Merten
Founder
Developer & Product Integration
Gary directs the training curriculum and serves as the lead designer of the EdTech platforms, which have piloted successfully since March 2025. His background in business and product development spans over 20 years across the consumer product and, more recently, Education Technology sectors. He holds a bachelor's degree from George Mason University along with graduate certificates in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Product Design from Stanford and MIT, credentials he earned while developing MMPOWER. That combination of hands-on industry experience and advanced technical training gives him a rare ability to translate cutting-edge AI research into training programs that actually work in the field.
Samantha Halverson
Co-Founder, Head of Therapeutics & Advisory Board Director
Samantha oversees the platform's clinical and safety architecture, drawing on more than 20 years of psychotherapy experience with justice-involved individuals, behavioral-health populations, and post-incarceration reentry programs. Holding her Bachelors of Arts Degree (BA) in Philosophy from UC Berkeley and my Masters in Social Work (MSW) with a Mental Health Concentration from USC She is supported by a nine-member PhD advisory board spanning medicine, psychotherapy, behavioral health, and AI/ML, plus two retired senior military officers. Every enhancement to ARTI passes a mandatory seven-dimension governance review before deployment.
Phil Banfield
Co-Founder, Product (ARTI / SaaS Platform) & Finance
Phil directs the ARTI/SaaS product and the company's finances. He brings two decades of digital media, product, and enterprise technology experience, including his current role as Principal Account Executive, Enterprise, covering AI companies at Amazon Web Services, and prior leadership positions as CEO of AdTech company Q1Media and Head of Product Partnerships at INTELITY. Phil holds an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurial Studies from UCLA Anderson School of Management and a BA in Economics from Emory University.