“The Horse’s Mouth with Tom McManus” is a unique talk show offering opinions and facts that come straight from the source. No gossip, no hearsay, no agendas; just topics straight from the Horse’s Mouth! His guests include top of the line, high profile figures in sports, news, entertainment, business and leaders in the community. He will tackle the hard subjects in society over a beer and laughs. Today our hosts, Tom McManus spoke with Kenneth Upchurch.
Kenneth Upchurch
CEO at Kai-Mation
Website Address: kai-mation.com
Short company description:
Kai-Mation provides an AI, ML, and Quantum exclusive partner services to the United States. We are driven to help clients within Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies in Department of War, Legal, F&A, Engineering, Sporting Goods, Life Sciences, Energy/Oil/Gas, Healthcare, Pharma, Casino, Office and Administration as well as Manufacturing and Logistics areas, to name a few!
How do you define success?
Getting the job done.
What lessons from sports have you applied to your personal life and career?
Everything! three quick pieces are competitiveness, intuition, and execution.
What strategies do you use to improve your performance?
I operate on three core strategies. First, I stay technically sharp by implementing AI in my own workflows daily. I don’t just read about Quantum and Agentic AI, I build with it, which keeps me grounded in what’s actually possible versus what’s hype. Second, I measure everything. I track my team’s delivery metrics, ROI timelines, and stakeholder satisfaction scores because you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Third, I seek brutally honest feedback from my teams. Some of my best process improvements came from junior engineers who saw inefficiencies I was too close to notice. Performance improvement isn’t about working harder, it’s about creating systems that make excellence repeatable.
Can You Discuss a Time When You Had to Work with a Team to Achieve a Goal?
At a client of mine, I led a global cross-functional team to implement enterprise-wide GenAI and Agentic AI integration across multiple business units in seven different countries. The goal was aggressive: deliver measurable ROI within the first quarter while maintaining compliance across international regulatory frameworks. The challenge wasn’t just technical. I had to align stakeholders from operations, compliance, IT, and finance, each with different priorities and concerns. I brought together AI engineers, business analysts, compliance officers, and product leaders, creating a unified vision where everyone understood not just what we were building, but why it mattered to their specific function. We established weekly cross-functional syncs, built transparent dashboards showing real-time progress, and celebrated small wins to maintain momentum. When our compliance team raised concerns about autonomous decision-making in fraud detection, we didn’t push back. We collaborated to build explainability features that actually made the system better. The results: $5.7M in incremental revenue within three months, $12.5M in cost savings over the first year, and full implementation in just seven months. But the real win was creating a team that continued driving AI adoption long after the initial rollout, because they owned the vision together. The lesson I took away: the best AI solutions aren’t built in isolation by technical teams. They’re built collaboratively with the people who will use them, ensuring both technical excellence and business adoption.
Transcript
Tom: All right, time once again for The Horse’s Mouth here at Tommy Mac’s. Of course, at my bar where everybody’s welcome to have a seat and get a chance to tell their story. Brought to you by our good friends at Foodies Care and right here at the Daily News Network. It’s up close and personal time. What does that mean? It means it’s one-on-one, and that’s always a fantastic time at the bar.We’re going to talk a little quantum, wrap it in sports, and have a good time. So let’s welcome in our guest, Ken Upchurch.
Ken: Pleasure, sir.
Tom: Amazing. How are you, Ken?
Ken: Great, how are you?
Tom: Good to see you. Welcome to the bar.
Ken: Thank you.
Tom: I know you’re an old-time Jaguar fan. You’ve been around a long time.
Ken: I like the old Jaguars. Yeah, I guess that’s why I’m here.
Tom: The new ones are doing good. We’re looking forward to next year, 2026.
Ken: I miss the old Jaguars defense. I really miss the old Jaguars.
Tom: Yeah, it was pretty darn good back in the day. And they’re pretty good today. There’s no doubt about that.
Tom: All right, tell us about Kai-Mation
Ken: Kai-Maiton is a consultancy firm. It started off working in what is called robotics — automated robotic process automation. And then it morphed into more of an AI-driven consultancy. And now we’ve emerged into quantum engineering. So we work with organizations to build their AI footprint, their quantum footprint, and be able to tackle much-needed solutions that they otherwise didn’t know were at their disposal.
Tom: So quantum is somewhat new? It’s been around a while, but now it’s coming up to the forefront?
Ken: Depends on the organization you ask. You look at the IBMs of the world — that’s the crown jewel, right? But you look at organizations like myself that are building solutions around quantum. It’s been around for 20–25 years, but under the radar. Most recently, it’s started emerging.
Tom: AI was like that for a while, right? It’s been around longer than we’ve heard of it.
Ken: Yeah its now become the real estate market, yeah early 2000s.
Tom: So quantum, from a 30,000-foot view — bigger, faster, more information quicker?
Ken: You just boiled the ocean perfectly. You’re looking at better accuracy, fewer errors, tackling computation more efficiently. Eventually they’ll address how much energy it takes to run quantum versus AI. But you’re accelerating your way of doing business. Organizations look at quantum to enable fraud detection, catch the bad guys a lot faster. On the adverse side, bad guys are using quantum to hack banking systems and things like that. We’re looking at a technology that could eventually replace current systems.
Tom: Totally out there question — Samantha Guthrie’s mom has been missing out in Arizona. She was found today. It’s national news. If they were using quantum, would that help them find her quicker? Gathering all the leads, the videos, the information — could that speed things up?
Ken: That’s an interesting question. Right now, today — no. But there are layers involved: police work, FBI involvement, multiple agencies interacting. If we could get that data to agencies faster, then yes. You’re already seeing elements of that happening.
Tom: There were delays getting data off a Ring camera, issues with footage retrieval. Would quantum make that quicker?
Ken: Maybe it would help. But there’s still a lot of traditional investigation happening. You could see there were elements of suspicious behavior. That’s how it could help catch bad people quicker.
Tom: Let’s take it into sports. I’ve envisioned this: standing in front of a massive computer screen and asking AI to show how to beat a defense in a specific formation. It runs every scenario and shows you the best play. Could quantum be used that way?
Ken: We’re not there yet. But look at how AI is enriching analytics already. You can provide data like: this play call is more accurate for this QB against this defensive back. Teams already use analytics. Organizations like the Giants use AI extensively on the data side. You see players reviewing plays on tablets. That enrichment is already happening.
Tom: There’s pushback in the music industry about AI.
Ken: It’s an artist’s appeal. I love artistic expression. I don’t think AI will replace it, but it can fit in. It can mimic voices at 99% accuracy.
Tom: A friend ran a song through AI and it came back polished. But the issue is, you may not sing it better than the AI-generated voice. Still, as a pitch concept, it’s powerful.
Ken: Government has been using AI extensively for years — even beyond my nearly 20 years working in AI business. There’s been a lot of cutting-edge technology.
Tom :Let’s talk Jags. Great year last season.
Ken: They could’ve gone to the Super Bowl. You’ve got to beat the Bills. On paper, the Jags were top six in offense and defense. Defense has been the struggle, but the last nine games they picked it up.
Ken: I’m old-school Jag. I went from watching the Gators’ high-octane offense under Steve Spurrier to watching Mark Brunell throw at the right times. They scored around 240 points a season back then. Now they’re scoring over 400 points a season.
Tom: But defensively, they need to put teams away. Suffocate the quarterback. You saw that in the Super Bowl with Seattle — they shut teams down.
Ken: Did you think the Patriots were going to win that game?
Tom: No. Their quarterback was getting hit constantly. They got in his head.
Ken: Seattle was loaded. They were blowing people out.
Tom: Ken, I appreciate your time. Thanks for being a Jags fan. Veterans United IPA — tasty and delicious. We love our local breweries. Make sure you check out Ken’s profile and this conversation, along with thousands of others, at the Daily News Network website. Till next time, stay safe and be cool out there. We’ll see you right here on The Horse’s Mouth.
The Daily News Network, Buzz Tv News, and DAILYBIZBRIEF highlight business professionals, nonprofits, veterans and community leaders on over 40 TV Segments including The Horse’s Mouth, Legacy of Leaders TV, Veterans Buzz TV, Finding Your Frequency, and Buzzworthy Businesses.
Teal, The Agency, powered by Client Focused Media, offers marketing agencies a full-service white-label solution to scale their services without the cost or complexity of building large in-house teams. Tailored for small and medium-sized agencies, Teal specializes in relationship-driven lead generation, advanced CRM workflows for personalized client engagement, and end-to-end project fulfillment. With powerful integrations like HighLevel, Stripe, and Zapier, Teal simplifies your operations while optimizing efficiency—saving you valuable time and resources. While other tools on the market like Vendasta, RocketDriver, and DashClicks, may require contracts, Teal provides flexible, no-contract pricing, giving you the freedom to grow on your terms. Ready to elevate your agency’s impact and efficiency? Explore how Teal can help you deliver exceptional results and better serve your clients. Apply on BeTeal.com today to start your journey toward becoming a marketing powerhouse by understanding digital marketing strategies for agencies, SEO best practices for marketing agencies and scaling a marketing agency.
