Jacob Solawetz
CO-FOUNDER & CTO
Repeat AI founder — previously created Roboflow and Arcee AI. Certified welder, fabricator, and Lake Superior mariner. Leads hardware, fabrication, and the island program.
MANITOU ISLAND, KEWEENAW, MICHIGAN · SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Civilization, ready to replicate.
Lithien builds Civilization Replicators — modular habitats that dock together magnetically, generate their own power, and carry the tooling to grow, machine, and build. Proven off-grid on Lake Superior. Bound for everywhere harder.
THE PRODUCT
The Civilization Replicator
A Replicator is a diamond-form module with magnetic vertex couplers. Units self-align and dock — in orbit or on the ground — snapping together into stations, workshops, and settlements. Every unit ships energy-rich: multi-source generation, deep storage, and standing tooling to make more of nearly everything, including the next Replicator.
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Grow House
Closed-loop food production under glass.
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Metal Shop
CNC, welding, and finishing in a sealed bay.
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Power Core
Generation and storage: solar, wind, micro-hydro, combustion.
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Lab
Instrumentation-grade clean workspace.
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Habitat
Quarters engineered like a ship, lit like a greenhouse.
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Comms
Links home from anywhere on — or off — Earth.
FIRST ARTICLES IN FABRICATION AND TEST ON MANITOU ISLAND
THE SITE
Why Manitou Island.
The proving ground.
Manitou Island sits off Keweenaw Point in Lake Superior — genuinely off-grid, seasonally iced in, storm-tested. Every Replicator system is proven here first. If it holds power, food, and comfort through a Superior winter, it is ready for harder frontiers.
The trades.
The Copper Country has run mines, mills, and machine shops for 180 years, with Michigan Tech's mining and materials engineers across the water in Houghton. We hire the descendants of the people who built the hardest industry in America — and pay them like it.
The ore basin.
Lake Superior is the deepest domestic mineral endowment in the United States, and Manitou Island sits in the middle of it. The Keweenaw's native copper district — the largest concentration of native copper on Earth, laced with native silver — electrified America once, and permitted projects are reopening it now. Down the shore, the Marquette Range still ships iron, and Eagle Mine produces the country's only primary nickel. Across the lake, Minnesota's Iron Range holds the Mesabi's iron and taconite; the Cuyuna Range's manganese, the largest known resource in the nation; and the Duluth Complex — copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum, palladium, gold, and silver in one of the world's largest undeveloped deposits — alongside titanium and vanadium in its oxide bodies, including Longnose, the largest and richest ilmenite deposit in North America, already piloted to 99.8% titanium dioxide. Rare earths are here too: mineralization identified in 2025 at legacy iron properties in both Minnesota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, with occurrences documented historically in the Wausau syenites of central Wisconsin. West along the rail corridor, the Bakken field supplies domestic crude at scale. Iron, copper, nickel, energy — everything a civilization needs to replicate moves through this basin, by rail and by water, through the largest freshwater shipping system on Earth.
THE LAKE SUPERIOR ORE BASIN · MARKERS APPROXIMATE
One builds one.
For every Civilization Replicator purchased by an organization or an individual, Lithien donates one to an organization working at a frontier — research stations, disaster response, remote and underserved communities. Replication is the product. Replication is also the point.
FOUNDERS
Erik Magliarditi
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
Spent his career at SpaceX in mission integration, launching government satellites. Before SpaceX, built satellite-constellation analysis software and computer-vision models at MIT. Leads software and go-to-market from San Francisco.
JOIN THE BUILD
How we work.
Hardware happens on the island — long, focused build stints with housing, meals, and the best shop on Lake Superior. Software and go-to-market run remote and off-grid-friendly, with six weeks a year at either the island or San Francisco. Machinist and trades roles run in seasonal bursts: short, intense, and very well paid.
Site Electrician MANITOU ISLAND SEASONAL BURST PREMIUM DAY RATE + ROOM & BOARD
Stand up and maintain island power end to end: generation across solar, wind, micro-hydro, and gen-sets; storage; distribution; and shop feeds — then wire Replicator prototypes to spec and keep it all safe in weather that doesn't care.
You: licensed electrician (journeyman or above) with off-grid, marine, or heavy-industrial experience. Comfortable being weathered in. Can rig, improvise, and document.
Apply: careers@lithien.com — put the role in the subject line.
Welding Specialist MANITOU ISLAND SEASONAL BURST PREMIUM DAY RATE + ROOM & BOARD
Structural and precision work on Replicator frames and vertex couplers: MIG and TIG on steel and stainless, fixturing, distortion control, and weld inspection to print.
You: certified (AWS or equivalent) with a stainless TIG portfolio. Fluent in a fab shop, reads drawings, and is happiest laying beads for weeks straight.
Apply: careers@lithien.com — put the role in the subject line.
Space Physicist SAN FRANCISCO OR REMOTE 6 WKS/YR ON-SITE FULL-TIME
Own the physics of docking: magnetic coupler modeling, contact dynamics, and the thermal, radiation, and power budgets of orbital and surface configurations — validated on the bench with the fabrication team on the island.
You: PhD or equivalent scar tissue in physics or aerospace. Hands-on instincts, strong in both simulation and hardware test. Prior flight hardware a plus.
Apply: careers@lithien.com — put the role in the subject line.
Industrial Designer SAN FRANCISCO OR REMOTE 6 WKS/YR ON-SITE FULL-TIME
Define how Replicators look, join, and live: module exteriors and interiors, coupler interfaces, and the visual system that makes a settlement feel like a well-lit greenhouse instead of a submarine.
You: portfolio spanning hard product and spatial design. CAD-fluent, details for manufacturability, and wants the work fabricated a hundred yards from your desk.
Apply: careers@lithien.com — put the role in the subject line.
Lithien is raising. If you back founders who fabricate, write us: investors@lithien.com Press: press@lithien.com