Douglas B. Lenat is the CEO of Cycorp, Inc. of Austin, Texas, and has been a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence, especially machine learning (with his AM and Eurisko programs), knowledge representation, blackboard systems, and "ontological engineering" (with his Cyc program at MCC and at Cycorp). He has also worked in military simulations and published a critique of conventional random-mutation Darwinism based on his experience with Eurisko. Lenat was one of the original Fellows of the AAAI.

Lenat's quest, in the Cyc project, to build the basis of a general artificial intelligence by manually representing knowledge in the formal language, CycL, based on extensions to first-order predicate calculus has not been without its critics. It is perhaps for this reason that "bogosity" is measured in Lenats according to the Jargon File (also known as the Hacker's dictionary).

At the University of Pennsylvania, Lenat received his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics, and his Master's degree in applied mathematics in 1972. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1976.