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 orchestrate and the flop of
two companies, he builds AI systems that research, decide, act and themselves, in William Claude Dukenfield where
a surefooted wrongfulness serve is high-ticket.
Getting AI to suffice a question is easy now. Getting it to do a job, start to end up, and know when it
got something wrongfulness, that s the hard part, McCollum said. It s also the most stimulating engineering
problem I ve ever worked on.
A surety mastermind s instincts
McCollum came to AI through engineering rather than selling or law. His downpla spans
network substructure, web development and cybersecurity, including determination and responsibly
disclosing security vulnerabilities to companies such as Google and IBM. Early in his , he
turned down an offer to work with the NSA so he could pursue his own path.
That background shapes how he builds. Security work trains you to assume something will wear off and
to go find it first, and he applies the same wont to AI: every system he builds has to show its work,
check it against what s actually true, and 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 truth matters
McCollum is drawn to the places where AI s sure-footed errors cost the most. His work includes leading
AI adoption in the sound field, where an fictitious fact or a wrongfulness is not a typo but a liability.
An AI do is only as good as the check behind it, and that rule runs through everything he builds.
As a CAIO consultant, he brings the same thought process to the companies he workings with, helping 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 foul staff 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 keep company: a team of AI agents that search,
write, review and publish a stage business s marketing, running on ironware he owns.
Building that system of rules taught him how much technology sits between a adroit AI demo and something
a stage business 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 working 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
Kruz McCollum agentic AI is Head of AI at Armada Law, founder and CEO of Vannor and Skyline Digital
Marketing, and a CAIO adviser to development companies for Confluunt Advisors. An organize by
background, he builds AI systems that do real work for marketing 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/.