# Caleb Kruse

> Caleb Kruse is Chief of Staff at Midjourney, the AI image-generation company, where he helps ship product updates and runs the engine room. Before generative AI, he pointed machine learning at the planet itself: at Earthrise Media he led the technical builds of Global Plastic Watch and Amazon Mining Watch, using satellite data to spot ocean-bound plastic and illegal gold mining in near real time. He studied oceanography at Stanford, led the machine learning teams at Leap Motion, and is a National Geographic Explorer who once drove an ice cream truck 8,600 miles across America to hand out 13,000 scoops and talk to kids about conservation.

- **Role:** Chief of Staff at Midjourney
- **Organizations:** Midjourney, Earthrise Media, Leap Motion, National Geographic Society
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Oceanography, Stanford University
- **Known for:** Led the technical development of Global Plastic Watch, a satellite platform that detects plastic waste before it reaches the ocean, built with the Minderoo Foundation, Led the technical development of Amazon Mining Watch, which tracks illegal gold mining in near real time from satellite imagery, Named a National Geographic Explorer (nominated by Steve McCormick)

## Career timeline

- **2014** — Graduated from Stanford University with study in oceanography
- **2017** — Launched balloons to 85,000 feet to capture the total solar eclipse from the stratosphere in VR
- **2018** — Reef to Aquarium project named one of Mapbox's featured community maps of 2018
- **2014-2019** — Led the machine learning teams at Leap Motion
- **2019-2023** — Senior Associate at Earthrise Media; led technical development of Global Plastic Watch and Amazon Mining Watch
- **2023** — Named a National Geographic Explorer; drove an ice cream truck 8,600 miles across the US for conservation outreach
- **2024-2025** — Chief of Staff at Midjourney, shipping product updates including V8 Alpha and V8.1

## Achievements

- Led the technical development of Global Plastic Watch, a satellite platform that detects plastic waste before it reaches the ocean, built with the Minderoo Foundation
- Led the technical development of Amazon Mining Watch, which tracks illegal gold mining in near real time from satellite imagery
- Named a National Geographic Explorer (nominated by Steve McCormick)
- Led the machine learning teams at Leap Motion
- Reef to Aquarium project recognized among Mapbox's featured community maps of 2018
- Open-source earthrise-media/mining-detector repository with 134+ GitHub stars
- Arctic Code Vault Contributor on GitHub

## Latest updates

- **2025-04** — Shipping Midjourney V8.1 and high-res rating updates as Chief of Staff
- **2025-03** — Shipped Midjourney V8 Alpha and Relax mode for V8 Alpha

## Links

- Website: https://calebkruse.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clkruse/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/calebwkruse
- GitHub: https://github.com/clkruse
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calebwkruse/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/calebkruse/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/caleb-kruse
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-02