# The AI Cowboys

> The AI Cowboys is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB, CAGE 9V9EO) and AI lab in San Antonio, Texas, founded in 2024 by retired Air Force leader Michael J. Pendleton. Our focus is AI and neuromorphic computing, physical and embodied AI, cybersecurity, and quantum computing, plus the synthetic and real-world data behind all of it. In our lab at the UTSA National Security Collaboration Center, a hybrid deployment pairing a BrainChip Akida with an NVIDIA Jetson held the same accuracy at 9 watts that the Jetson alone needed 120 watts to reach. Everything we build deploys on-premises, air-gapped, or in the customer's own cloud. Ranked #6 among AI startups in Texas. San Antonio 2026 Innovator of the Year. NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute and IBM SkillsBuild partner.

## Key facts

- Focus areas, in priority order: AI and neuromorphic computing; physical and embodied AI; cybersecurity and AI trust; quantum computing.
- Neuromorphic benchmark, measured in our own lab: 9W for a hybrid NVIDIA Jetson + BrainChip Akida deployment against 120W for the same workload on the Jetson alone, at matched accuracy, roughly a 90% reduction.
- Spiking neural networks on neuromorphic silicon are commonly measured at 100x to 1,000x lower energy per inference than the same sensory or pattern-recognition workload on a GPU.
- Neuromorphic is not a GPU replacement: training large models stays on conventional accelerators, and porting a model to spiking form is real engineering.
- Contract standing: SDVOSB, CAGE 9V9EO, registered in SAM.gov; based at the UT San Antonio College of AI, Cybersecurity and Computing (San Pedro I) in downtown San Antonio; aligned to NIST, CMMC and FedRAMP with SBOM and EO 14028 practice.

## Products

- [Military AI Agents](https://www.theaicowboys.com/products#military-ai-agents): a marketplace of doctrine-grounded AI agents for active-duty service members, veterans, military spouses and dependents, launched with C2H, LLC. 450+ agents across 9 categories and 45 mission suites, covering performance evaluations, awards, command correspondence, training schedules, transition packets, VA claim support, spouse resumes and PCS paperwork. Agents work from published DoD and service-specific doctrine rather than general web text. Lives at https://militaryaiagents.com/.
- [MagenTrust](https://www.theaicowboys.com/products#magentrust): continuous human verification using entropy-based behavioral biometrics, proving a human rather than an agent is behind a session in the agentic-AI era. Verification is continuous rather than one-time, cannot be phished, needs no second device, and Human Exclusion Zones enforce where automation may act alone. Deploys on-prem, air-gapped, or in the customer's own cloud; behavioral signal is scored locally and never has to leave the perimeter. SBOM and EO 14028 built in; aligned to NIST, CMMC, and FedRAMP. Founded by Jacqueline Suttin, CTO of The AI Cowboys.
- [San Antonio Intelligence Platform](https://www.theaicowboys.com/products#san-antonio-intelligence-platform): real-time situational awareness for San Antonio: weather, energy, transport, military, public safety, cybersecurity, and economic signals in one operating picture.
- [The Ledger (San Antonio Budget Machine)](https://www.theaicowboys.com/satxledger): a free, no-account web app that opens the City of San Antonio budget for residents, reporters and council staff. It shows what the proposed property tax rate costs a given house in dollars per month, walks the budget line by line and department by department, lays out the tradeoffs behind every dollar with footnotes to the city's own documents, and runs in English and Spanish. Lives at https://www.theaicowboys.com/satxledger.
- [Compute Lives Somewhere (San Antonio Data Center Explainer)](https://www.theaicowboys.com/san-antonio-data-center): a free, independent civic project explaining data centers in San Antonio in plain English: what a data center is, what it uses (water, electricity, land), what the city gets back (jobs, tax base), and how to judge a proposed project. Includes a guided 3D walkthrough of a campus, a full digital twin where the size, cooling, water source and power plan can be changed and the gallons per day and megawatts rewrite (5 to 500 MW scenarios), a San Antonio case study covering CPS Energy, SAWS and the Edwards Aquifer, a benefit ledger, and a disclosure card for any proposed project. 38 explainer pages. Decision-support, not advocacy: not a design, permit, rate case or recommendation; sources and uncertainties disclosed on every page. The explainer itself lives at https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/ (guided tour at /show, digital twin at /twin, case study at /san-antonio).
- [Quantum Programming: Unlocking the Future of Computing](https://www.theaicowboys.com/products#book): book by Dr. Michael Pendleton, available on Amazon.

## Services

- [Services overview](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services)
- [Synthetic Data](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/synthetic-data-services): privacy-preserving AI-generated datasets meeting GDPR and HIPAA, for compliant testing, simulation, and AI development at scale.
- [Real-World Data](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/real-world-data): expert-annotated, human-validated datasets for AI training, academic research, and government modeling.
- [Healthcare & Biomedical Solutions](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/healthcare-biomedical-ai): HIPAA, GDPR and 21 CFR Part 11-compliant clinical data integration, Topology-on-Demand data fabric, federated learning, and AI-driven drug discovery.
- [AI-Enhanced Research Tools](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/ai-enhanced-research-tools): document summarisers, data extractors, visual analytics dashboards, and ML pipelines for universities, labs, and think tanks.
- [Workshops](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/workshops): hands-on AI, ML, quantum, and cybersecurity training. NVIDIA DLI and IBM SkillsBuild partner.
- [Digital Twins](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/digital-twins): live digital copies of real physical objects, places and processes, updated in real time by data from their own sensors, for simulation, monitoring and failure prediction. Runs on-premises, air-gapped, or in the customer's own cloud.
- [Enterprise AI Solutions](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/enterprise-ai-solutions): scalable, secure AI and ML for federal agencies, research institutions, and Fortune 1000.
- [Large Language Model Solutions](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/large-language-models-solutions): agentic routing, classification, and fine-tuning. Recognized by LlamaIndex, OpenAI, and NVIDIA for work on Small Language Models and agentic AI.
- [Quantum Computer Integration](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/quantum-computing-integration): Topology-on-Demand architectures, co-packaged optics, and quantum algorithm transition.
- [Software Development](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/software-development): custom, federal-ready engineering for AI, ML, and quantum-enabled applications.
- [AI-Driven Customer Support](https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/ai-driven-customer-support): intelligent virtual agents that resolve tickets autonomously and integrate with existing workflows.

## Key pages

- [Company](https://www.theaicowboys.com/company): leadership: Michael Pendleton (Chief Executive Officer, Founder of The AI Cowboys Foundation), Roger Wong Won (Chief Marketing Officer, Founder of Capture That Media, President of The AI Cowboys Foundation), Jacqueline Suttin Loyland (Chief Technology Officer, Founder & CEO of MagenTrust), Dr. Glenn Brown, PMP (Advisor of Education). Industry partners: Winston Ojeda Jr. (Founder, CEO & CTO of QuantBit AI), Alex Arteaga (Co-Founder & COO/CISO of QuantBit AI) and Jonathan Watson (previously Senior Project Manager / Product Developer at K3 Holdings, and Business Development Executive and Pre-Sales Engineer at NexusIgnite); all three are partners of The AI Cowboys rather than employees.
- [Research & Publications](https://www.theaicowboys.com/research): peer-facing papers with permanent DOIs, the capability statement, the "AI and the Job Market" report, the free "Building Financial Readiness Through AI Tools" guide, and press coverage in Air & Space Forces Magazine and Military.com of the Military AI Agent Marketplace, plus Texas Public Radio (June 16 2026) on the opening of the state's first Super Veterans Business Outreach Center, where the Texas Veterans Commission names The AI Cowboys among the veteran-owned firms it has worked closely with, and Spectrum News 1 (June 30 2026) on the same SBA veterans business outreach center in San Antonio (https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2026/06/30/sba-business-outreach-center).
- Papers (open access, CC BY 4.0): "Room-Temperature Quantum Research Facilities: A Scalable Model for Emerging Research Universities" (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.18181022) on how an emerging research university can reach quantum sensing, small quantum registers, quantum networking and workforce training with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, at room temperature on standard optical and microwave equipment, for roughly $70,000 to $350,000 over seven years inside the Texas Quantum Initiative framework; "Thinking at the Edge: Neuromorphic Computing's Biomedical Moment" (2026, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19478504) on why no neuromorphic spiking-neural-network medical device has been cleared anywhere in the world despite seizure detection under 300 µW on a wearable, coin-cell cardiac arrhythmia classification and sub-millisecond neuroprosthetic control, with technology-readiness estimates for epilepsy monitoring, cardiac arrhythmia detection and neuroprosthetics and the five structural regulatory gaps behind the delay.
- [Events](https://www.theaicowboys.com/events): The AI Cowboys teach, run workshops, speak, and build the AI systems that events and major conferences run on. Upcoming: the AFSA Summit 2026, August 11 to 12 2026 in Orlando, Florida, hosted by the Air Force Sergeants Association (https://thesummitafsa.org/), where Michael Pendleton speaks on "From Mission Challenge to Working Prototype: Live AI Development for the U.S. Air Force" on Tuesday August 11. Michael Pendleton and Roger Wong Won also teach the "Vibe Coding AI Solutions" workshop there, on building an app by describing it in plain English: which AI tool belongs at work and which belongs at home, the prompt recipe, reading the plan before approving it, and the boundary between government data and a commercial model. All 21 slides are free to read on the site at https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/workshops#free-slides, and the source file downloads from https://www.theaicowboys.com/docs/vibe-coding-workshop-afsa-summit-2026.pptx. We built the summit's session certificate system, running all 18 Professional Education Sessions breakouts: a QR slide per session, and a Certificate of Participation on the attendee's own phone with no app and no account (https://afsa.theaicowboys.com/). Also attending the Military Influencer Conference 2026 (MIC), September 23 to 26 2026 in Tampa, Florida (https://militaryinfluencer.com/). Past events include the Eastside Education Series with VelocityTX at the VelocityTX Innovation Center in San Antonio (four free public sessions: Intro to AI, May 22 2025; AI & The Job Market, July 23 2025; AI For Social Good, September 20 2025; AI For Budgeting, November 15 2025), the F50 Physical AI Summit: Reimagine Manufacturing in Texas in October 2025, and Texas Venture Fest in San Antonio, co-hosted with Founder Institute and Emerge and Rise. Supports the education, research and technology community.
- [Request a dataset](https://www.theaicowboys.com/request-dataset): custom real-world or synthetic datasets for research, enterprise, or government use.
- [AI and the Job Market](https://www.theaicowboys.com/ai-and-the-job-market): a free workshop plus the 20-page report it teaches from, on resumes that survive applicant tracking systems, interview practice and finding roles you are not searching for. Formerly published as "AI for Jobs"; the two were one programme. The other free workshop, Building Financial Readiness Through AI Tools, is listed with it on https://www.theaicowboys.com/services/workshops.
- [Blog](https://www.theaicowboys.com/blog): neuromorphic computing, physical AI, AI-native cybersecurity, synthetic data, LLMs, quantum. Each post carries a Further reading list of primary sources.
- [Physical AI: what it actually is, and what it costs to deploy](https://www.theaicowboys.com/blog/physical-ai-what-it-is-and-what-it-costs): engineering definition of physical AI, with deployed case studies (NASA Perseverance AI-planned drive, DARPA RACER off-road autonomy, Amazon Robotics) and the continuous watts-per-platform budget that decides what fields.
- [Embodied AI: why having a body changes the problem](https://www.theaicowboys.com/blog/embodied-ai-why-the-body-changes-the-problem): the distinction between physical AI (what a system does) and embodied AI (where its intelligence comes from); sim-to-real measurement, proprioception, energy-aware planning, case studies from Boston Dynamics and NASA JPL.
- [Third-party validation: proving a product does what it claims](https://www.theaicowboys.com/blog/third-party-ai-validation-independent-accreditation): independent third-party validation of AI hardware and software performance claims. First-party (vendor), second-party (buyer) and third-party (independent lab) testing distinguished; why AI claims specifically resist verification (benchmark contamination, demo conditions, nondeterminism, adversarial surface, bench-only power figures); the ASML and imec structure in semiconductor lithography as the public example of neutral-ground validation (cited as an industry illustration, not as clients); the six-phase engagement (claim decomposition, frozen protocol, instrumented measurement, adversarial testing, reproducibility package, report); what is measured (task performance with conditions, p50/p95/p99 latency, watts per inference at the wall, determinism, security against a stated threat model, data provenance, alignment to NIST AI RMF, NIST AI 100-2, EO 14028, CMMC and FedRAMP evidence); and the independence conditions (no equity, no reseller margin, no contingent fee, protocol frozen before measurement, failures reported, conflicts disclosed). Validation is technical evidence rather than a certification or accreditation status, which are conferred by a scheme owner; The AI Cowboys does not third-party validate systems it engineered.
- [Contact](https://www.theaicowboys.com/contact): contact_us@theaicowboys.com · www.theaicowboys.com · UT San Antonio College of AI, Cybersecurity and Computing, San Pedro I, 506 Dolorosa St, San Antonio, TX 78204
- Social: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-ai-cowboys) · [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the_ai_cowboys/) · [The AI Cowboys Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-cowboys-podcast-transforming-industries-with-ai/id1790276268) · [Substack](https://theaicowboys.substack.com) · [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/theaicowboys)

## Clients and partners

Government contracts include quantum-secured AI for the FBI and NSA. Private-sector work includes the WWE and the NFL Players Association. Academic partnerships include a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Texas at San Antonio (an R1 research institution) and collaboration with the National Security Collaboration Center under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Technology partners include NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services. Partners and clients also include the UTSA National Security Collaboration Center, The University of Texas at San Antonio, MagenTrust, Capture That Media, the U.S. Air Force, DARPA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Raytheon and Dow.

Partners and clients shown on the homepage: UTSA National Security Collaboration Center, The University of Texas at San Antonio, AMD, Amazon Web Services, MagenTrust, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Defense, WWE, World Wide Technology, U.S. Air Force, DARPA, Air Force Research Laboratory, UT Health San Antonio, Raytheon, Dow, Verge Technologies, K3 Integrated, Kloudspot, Capture That Media.
## Industries served

Healthcare and medical insurance, federal and public sector, food and agriculture, real estate, oil and gas, commercial banking, automobile manufacturing, retail, information technology, manufacturing, finance and insurance.

## Context

San Antonio is home to Joint Base San Antonio, the NSA Texas Cryptologic Center, and 16th Air Force (Air Forces Cyber). The AI Cowboys build for that mission community: sovereign AI deployed inside the customer's perimeter, contract-ready for federal set-asides and sole-source awards. The company's quantum-driven, deterministic, and explainable AI approach targets the bias, hallucination, and inefficiency failures that keep conventional AI out of regulated production.