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GREENVILLE, S.C. Kruz McCollum spends his days on a problem most people using AI never
see: getting it to do real work without someone checking every word. An mastermind and the flop of
two companies, he builds AI systems that search, settle, act and check themselves, in fields where
a confident wrongfulness suffice is expensive.
Getting AI to answer a question is easy now. Getting it to do a job, start to wind up, and know when it
got something wrongfulness, that s the hard part, McCollum said. It s also the most exciting engineering
problem I ve ever worked on.
A security mastermind s instincts
McCollum came to AI through engineering rather than marketing or law. His downpla spans
network infrastructure, web development and cybersecurity, including determination and responsibly
disclosing surety vulnerabilities to companies such as Google and IBM. Early in his , he
turned down an offer to work with the NSA so he could go after his own path.
That background shapes how he builds. Security work trains you to assume something will wear out and
to go find it first, and he applies the same wont to AI: every system of rules he builds has to show its work,
check it against what s actually true, and catch its own mistakes before a mortal ever sees them. The
question he asks of any AI isn t whether it sounds right, but whether it is right, and whether the
system knows the difference.
AI where accuracy matters
McCollum is closed to the places where AI s capable errors cost the most. His work includes leading
AI borrowing in the effectual arena, where an unreal fact or a wrongfulness citation is not a typo but a financial obligation.
An AI answer is only as good as the behind it, and that rule runs through everything he builds.
As a CAIO advisor, he brings the same thought to the companies he workings with, portion them find
where AI actually pays off and put it to work alongside the systems they already run, rather than
bolting on tools nobody uses.
Building companies on it
McCollum supported Skyline Digital Marketing in Anderson, South Carolina, in 2024, because most
agencies don t have the technical stave to fix what they find. In 2025 he based Vannor in Greenville
to establish the AI behind that work, and it grew into its own accompany: a team of AI agents that research,
write, review and write a stage business s selling, running on hardware he owns.
Building that system of rules taught him how much technology sits between a ingenious AI demo and something
a byplay can rely on every day, and he says that gap is where the opportunity is.
Everyone has seen what AI can say. Very few people have seen what it can do when it s built
properly, McCollum said. That s the part I can t stop workings on.
Always learning
McCollum holds 29 professional certifications, including Vanderbilt University s Agentic AI and AI
Agents, Google s AI Professional and Cybersecurity programs, Google Ads and Analytics
certifications, and HIPAA for Business Associates.
About Kruz McCollum agentic AI
Kruz McCollum is Head of AI at Armada Law, flop and CEO of Vannor and Skyline Digital
Marketing, and a CAIO consultant to growth companies for Confluunt Advisors. An organise by
background, he builds AI systems that do real work for merchandising and stage business. His work, press
coverage and certifications are at https://kruzmccollum.com/, and he is on LinkedIn at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kruz-mccollum/.
