AI Is Everywhere.
ROI Doesn't
Come Easy.
Intrepid engineers AI strategy for organizations that have to prove it works — to a regulator, an auditor, or a board. 95% of GenAI pilots return no measurable P&L impact; the failure is organizational, not the model. We get you into the 5%, and leave the platform that keeps you there.
Executive AI leadership on retainer. We own the roadmap, the governance, and the evidence that it worked.
Two-week inventory of what you already run, scored against the frameworks that govern you.
Deep evaluation in Voyager. Posture mapped to NIST AI RMF, with a prioritized remediation roadmap.
Build and integrate. ARKONA deployed into your stack, audit trail intact from commit zero.
Three Macro Forces · Open Window · 24 Months
MIT NANDA's The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business (2025) found 95% of GenAI pilots fail — a "learning gap," not a model problem: misaligned goals, weak data, no integration into workflows. RAND 2024 (Ryseff et al., 65 practitioners) reached the same root cause. Cite-cap and audit-by-design fix exactly these.
Token prices fell 10–50×/yr (a16z LLMflation, Epoch AI). Reasoning-tier now 10–30× pricier; cheap legacy models retiring on schedule; OpenAI publicly losing money on Pro. Cheap experiments end ≤24 mo.
EO 14028, NIST AI RMF, FCRA expansion, CMMC 2.0 — all require AI decision-level auditability. ARKONA was multi-tenant + cite-cap + US-only-AI from commit zero.
The companies that cross the divide don't build alone. MIT found buying from specialized partners and integrating deeply succeeds about 3× more often than internal DIY builds — aimed at back-office friction, where the savings are. That is the Intrepid model: COMET maps the strategy to your regulators, ARKONA operates it after we leave.
Four Ways In · Two Lines · One Answer
Intrepid sells two things. Strategic consulting that maps your AI and cyber posture to the regulations that govern you, and the AI-native platform that operates the strategy after we leave. Below are the four doors people walk through to get there — each one is a rung on the same ladder, priced and delivered the same way. No hands-on assessment, no hourly advisory, no firmware work — we refer that out.
COMET
Cognitive Operations & Mission Effectiveness Taxonomy
Five-rung fixed-price ladder, scored across five governance domains (Conceptual · Operational · Mission · Engineering · Transition). Operationalized through Voyager — our governance dashboard that scores your posture, aligns it to NIST AI RMF, and exports Capella/Arcadia MBSE artifacts your architecture team can keep.
| Briefing | Half-day workshop. 1-page heat-map of your posture vs. your regulators. |
| Discovery | Two-week inventory + framework scoring (CMMC, NIST 800-53, FCRA). |
| Assessment | Six-week deep evaluation in Voyager. Prioritized remediation roadmap + current/future-state model. |
| Implementation | Build phase. Deploy ARKONA + integrate with your stack. |
| Retainer | Ongoing fractional governance + platform operations. |
ARKONA
Multi-tenant, audit-by-design, US-only models.
- Cite-cap framework — every AI decision mapped to its authorizing regulation
- Multi-tenant from commit zero — not a SaaS retrofitted with row-level filters
- US-only AI models — Llama + Anthropic Claude only; no Qwen / Mistral / DeepSeek
- Audit trail by construction — every output, delegation, and action survives subpoena
- Industry packs — Aviation MRO (live reference); Government Contracting, Healthcare (ambulatory), Finance (SMB / community bank), and Energy (utility grid) on the roadmap
See ARKONA running in production →
Contact us for subscription details →
One AI Strategy · Two Value Paths
If you advise clients for a living, AI is two problems at once. Inside your own firm it is an efficiency question. Facing your clients it is a revenue question — and most firms are losing the second one while they solve the first. We work both paths under one strategy.
Find the value already hiding in the work you do today.
- Labor hours reclaimed
- Cycle times compressed
- Better decision quality on trusted data
- Reduced risk, rework and compliance drag
Turn AI expertise into a repeatable consulting deliverable.
- AI readiness and maturity assessments you can resell
- Opportunity discovery and use-case development
- ROI business cases and value tracking
- Governance, risk and ethics frameworks
Start with the business problem. Measure what matters. Scale only what proves value. That holds whether the beneficiary is your P&L or your client's.
Founder-Led · Built To Add Value
Intrepid is a Maryland-based innovation firm built to add tangible value to the businesses we partner with and the operators we serve, backed by 22+ years across the United States Air Force, NSA, and federal contracting. We don't sell hours. We sell outcomes that hold up under regulator scrutiny, plus the AI-native platform (ARKONA) that operates the strategy between engagements.
Cybersecurity engineer. Built the platform stack. D.Eng in AI/ML beginning September 2026. Deep federal-contracting background. Holds the Maryland LLC. The ARKONA platform itself runs at arkonaresearch.com — that's where you can see what we ship. His operating philosophy is written down: Arango's Executive 12 →
[email protected]Start With A Briefing
One email. One sentence about what your auditor is asking for — or where your AI initiative stalled. We respond inside two business days with a Briefing scope and a calendar window. The Briefing is a half-day workshop; output is a 1-page heat-map of your posture vs. your regulators plus a comprehensive report on AI implementation. The heat-map and report are yours; no commitment to climb the COMET ladder. Contact us for full pricing and scoping.