Kaiko HQ, a pioneering startup building the foundational infrastructure to merge emotional intelligence (EQ) with artificial intelligence (AI), has crossed a major milestone with over 50,000 users stepping into the ARC Terminal. This milestone celebrates the visionary new platform for emotionally intelligent, self-evolving narratives – powered by its proprietary EQ+ infrastructure.
At the heart of ARC is sentience.v1() – Kaiko’s first deployed emotionally intelligent agent – marking users’ initial interaction with a system designed to sense, adapt, and respond to human emotion.
“This isn’t just a project or a game, this is a global experiment in emotional intelligence,” said Jesse Jarvis, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Kaiko HQ. “We’re running an experiment akin to a worldwide Turing test, challenging ourselves to build agents so intuitively human that users can’t tell they’re AI by building ecosystems that breathe, adapt, and grow with every interaction.”
Kaiko’s breakthrough lies in Dynamic Self Evolution (DSE), a foundational system that gives AI agents a fluid and adaptive internal state. Unlike traditional AI, DSE enables agents to develop dynamic personalities that evolve over time. This allows them to respond to users with emotional consistency, contextual awareness, and a sense of continuity that feels genuinely alive. DSE represents a broader leap forward in building emotionally resonant, self-aware AI for any interactive domain..
This milestone marks not just user interest in this technology, but it signals the arrival of a new paradigm in AI, where emotionally-aware agents interact dynamically with real-time changes in user sentiment. Kaiko HQ’s innovative EQ Layer for AI, a powerful abstraction that gives any AI agent an intuitive grasp of human emotional state, is set to revolutionize the field.
“We believe AI shouldn’t just be smart, it should be emotionally attuned,” said William Santo, Chief Technology Officer at Kaiko HQ. “Just as operating systems made it easier to build computing applications, Kaiko makes it possible to build emotionally intelligent AI by default.”
Built for use in industries ranging from healthcare and education to customer support and digital wellbeing, Kaiko’s tools help AI respond with compassion, tailor experiences to users’ emotional journeys, and promote psychological safety. Kaiko is committed to open collaboration with developers, researchers, and product teams to drive innovation around the protocol it provides. Whether enhancing a mental health chatbot, creating a more supportive digital tutor, or building a human-centered interface for enterprise AI, Kaiko provides the emotional foundation.
About Kaiko HQ
Kaiko HQ is building the emotional infrastructure for AI. Founded in 2025, the company is on a mission to make artificial intelligence emotionally aware, ethically responsible, and deeply human. With its EQ Layer, Kaiko helps developers build AI systems that understand us, not just our words, but how we feel.
By blending emotional intelligence with decentralized tech, Kaiko enables storytellers, gamers, and communities to co-create living IPs that evolve beyond static media. Built on the foundational work of Kaiko HQ, Kaiko Studios turns EQ infrastructure into living, playable experiences. As the first public-facing expression of this protocol, the ARC Terminal offers a preview of what emotionally responsive digital experiences will look like across gaming, media, and the metaverse.
Kaiko’s technology stack consists of a three-layer protocol that includes the EQ+ API for emotional intelligence, DSE for dynamic evolution, and custom Image/Video models for media pipelines, autonomous Agent networks as well as the Kaiko Token for retail access to products, merchandising, and media.
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