MW Michael WardAI Systems Builder Book a consultation →
MW
Service-Disabled Veteran · Founder · Builder

I learn the domain.
Then I build the system.

Federal contracting, deep-tech R&D, govtech, cleantech, quantitative trading. Different domains, same method — learn it deeply with AI, design the build, put it into production.

See what I've built → Start a conversation
Haslet, Texas· Founder of SWTMT Strategic Solutions· Building across 7+ verticals
Michael Ward, AI systems builder and founder of SWTMT Strategic Solutions

Different worlds.
One method.

Chemistry, federal acquisition, market microstructure, insurance, govtech — I learn each one until I can build in it, then orchestrate the build end to end and ship it.

3
ventures founded & operated
7+
industries shipped in
24/7
automated bid pipeline running
$250M+
in proposals engineered — last 60 days
Services

One builder. Firm-level output.

I implement AI across more domains than most firms have departments — and everything on this page came from the same hands available for your problem. Tell me what's costing you time or revenue. The first consultation is free.

S.01

Custom software development

Platforms, portals, and full applications shipped end to end — at a pace that turns quarters into weeks. The flagship build below went from concept to working product in six days.

Scope your build →
S.02

Business & personal automation

AI agents and pipelines that erase whole categories of manual work — operations, reporting, follow-up, the inbox you never get through. You get your week back, and keep it.

Automate the busywork →
S.03

Custom bid engine creation

The federal bid engine on this page, rebuilt around your company — your entity, your NAICS lanes, your pipeline — producing submission-ready responses in hours instead of weeks.

Get your bid engine →
S.04

AI implementation & enablement

I install the system, then train your people to run it without me — plain language, your real problems, working results before I leave the room.

Bring me in →

Free 30-minute consultation

Bring the problem. Leave with a plan, a timeline, and a straight answer on whether I'm the right builder for it.

Book a consultation →
Selected Systems

Real builds. Real problems solved.

Every one of these is something I designed and built. Here's what each actually does — and three of them you can try right here.

Land Intelligence PlatformPrivate build
7,244corridor acres mapped
1,420parcels scored & tiered
2clicks, site plan → costing
6days, concept → product
Corridor PlatParcel Dossiers3D Site PlannerCost EngineProgram PresetsOwner Alerts
Platform stays private · demo by invitation
01 — Land Development · Flagship Build

The Abilene Project

The problem: Underwriting a development corridor takes months of title runs, zoning pulls, and site studies across thousands of parcels.

A full land-intelligence platform covering an entire West Texas corridor — every parcel scored, filtered, and underwritten, with zoning, platting, floodplain, title, minerals, and utilities fused into a dossier on each one. On top sits custom CAD-class software I built for it: hand the 3D site planner a sketched concept and it returns a rendered, dimensioned site plan with full construction costing — two clicks, end to end. Concept to working product in six days, a scope most teams would staff for the better part of a year.

  • 1,400+ parcels scored and tiered across a 7,000-acre corridor
  • Custom 3D site planner — hand-drawn concept in, rendered CAD-grade plan out
  • Site plan to full construction costing in two clicks
  • One-click development presets: data center, housing, hotel, retail, medical, industrial
GIS3D CADCost EngineBuilt in 6 days
Living RecordInteractive · sample
Ask the workspace
02 — Enterprise AI · Field Engineering

The Context Loop

The problem: Ops teams lose hours keeping status current across a dozen disconnected tools — and it's stale anyway.

A system that captures every event — emails, payment exceptions, recovery steps, onboarding — the moment it happens across nine tools, and writes it to a record that keeps itself current. The team stops updating status fields and just asks.

  • Live event capture across nine integrated tools
  • Self-maintaining records that are always current
  • Ask questions in plain English over live company state
  • Delivered with a full ROI model and per-seat pricing
OrchestrationIntegrationsRetrieval
Live Site
Arid Water Systems — go-to-market site for atmospheric water generators
03 — Cleantech · Go-To-Market

Water From Air

The problem: A hardware company pulling drinking water from air had to sell to homeowners, NGOs, and global field teams at once.

A full product and go-to-market site with a distinct track for each buyer, unit specs and financing, and an embedded AI assistant that answers questions and drives consultations.

  • Segmented architecture: Home · NGO · Global field
  • Unit specifications, financing, and NGO pricing
  • Embedded conversational AI assistant
  • Built to convert — every path leads to a booked call
Go-To-MarketHardwareConversational AI
Visit Arid Water Systems ↗
Case AnalyzerInteractive · sample

Veteran seeks an increased rating for tinnitus and service connection for PTSD. Service treatment records document acoustic trauma during a 2009 deployment. A 2021 C&P examination notes ongoing symptoms consistent with the claimed conditions.

04 — GovTech · Applied AI

Appeals Intelligence

The problem: Board of Veterans' Appeals cases bury reviewers in documents, and manual extraction is slow and hard to audit.

An AI workspace that classifies cases, extracts the issues and evidence, and attaches verifiable provenance to every output — so the work is fast and defensible.

  • Automated issue & evidence extraction
  • Case classification and routing
  • Verifiable provenance behind every output
  • Built for sensitive, regulated case files
Document AIAdjudicationProvenance
Longest-Running
PlastiBioFuel — converting PET plastic into renewable ethanol
05 — Deep-Tech · Biotech

PlastiBioFuel

The problem: PET plastic is everywhere, and most "biofuel" competes with the food supply.

My longest-running venture — and where this whole way of working started. An enzymatic platform that converts post-consumer PET plastic into ethanol. I taught myself the underlying chemistry with AI, used it to invent the process, then proved it out in a real university lab.

  • An original conversion process I invented — validated at lab scale, not theoretical
  • Successful depolymerization of post-consumer PET plastic
  • Independently replicated — repeatable results, not a one-off
  • NSF SBIR Phase I proposal submitted — July 2026, with a UNT research subaward
EnzymaticPET → EthanolCleantechNSF SBIR
Visit the site ↗
Policy ReaderInteractive · sample

Drop in any insurance policy. The AI reads it and hands it back in plain English — with the gaps flagged.

▤ sample-dec-page.pdf dense · 2 pages
06 — InsurTech · Document AI

Policy, Understood in Seconds

The problem: Clients drown in policy paperwork; agents burn hours reading dec pages line by line.

Clients upload whatever they already have. AI reads it, builds a profile, compares coverage across carriers, and surfaces the gaps in plain language — behind a passwordless vault, with separate customer and agent experiences.

  • Reads dense policy documents and extracts every field with confidence scores
  • Compares coverage across carriers and flags the gaps
  • Magic-link, passwordless client vault
  • Dual customer / agent dashboards — transient by default
Document AIExtractionPasswordless
The Engine

From open opportunity to submission-ready. In hours.

The system I've been refining the longest — a live pipeline running around the clock, tracking pursuits across multiple companies and turning open federal opportunities into compliant, submission-ready drafts.

Continuous
opportunity ingestion, 24/7
Multi-entity
one pipeline, every company
Hours
from draft to submission-ready
Unlimited
pursuits tracked in parallel
🔒 The engine and the prompts stay in-house — what you see is the output.
Also Running

Autonomous systems, working while I sleep.

Self-built trading and agent infrastructure — live data in, decisions and execution out, kept alive on their own hardware.

Live · trading

Quant tennis market-maker

A bot pricing live tennis markets on Kalshi, quoting both sides with full risk controls — trading live, now on its second iteration.

KalshiMarket-makingv2
Live · 24/7

Solana execution engine

A trading bot with its own signal generation and execution path, trading live around the clock under PM2 on dedicated hardware.

SolanaPM2Always-on
In development

AI-assisted equities desk

An Interactive Brokers system pairing live market data with AI-assisted decisioning. Fully architected and costed; moving into build.

IBKRArchitectedCosted
Teaching

I teach people to actually use AI.

My favorite thing isn't building for myself — it's sitting down with someone who runs a real business and showing them how to point AI at the problem that's been eating their week. Especially the folks the tech world forgets: non-technical owners and older entrepreneurs who were told this stuff isn't for them.

It is. I run hands-on sessions and small cohorts that start from a real problem you're facing and end with you able to solve it yourself — and when you'd rather have it just done, I'll build the implementation for you.

Bring this to your team →
  • 01
    Start from your real problem
    No toy demos — we work on the thing that's actually slowing you down.
  • 02
    Built for non-technical owners
    Plain language, no jargon, designed for people new to AI.
  • 03
    Walk away able to do it yourself
    You leave with a repeatable workflow, not a one-time trick.
  • 04
    Done-for-you when you want it
    Prefer it handled? I'll build and deploy the implementation.
About

A service-disabled veteran who builds across worlds most people would say don't belong on the same résumé.

SDVOSB BBA Finance · UNT Haslet, Texas Multi-entity founder

I'm Michael Ward. I build production AI systems across federal contracting, deep-tech, govtech, cleantech, and quantitative trading — usually by teaching myself the domain first and then orchestrating the entire build, from research to deployed, running code.

The throughline is a method, not an industry. I learn a problem deeply with AI until I can build in it, then I ship the result and put it in front of real users. That's how one person ends up with a biofuel process, a federal bid engine, and a live trading desk at once — and it's why there's almost no problem I'll call out of scope.

That method now has a home: Varen AI is my AI venture, where our team builds bid & proposal automation, back-office automation, and custom software for business owners.

FAQ

Straight answers.

Who is Michael Ward?

A service-disabled Army veteran, AI systems builder, and founder of Varen AI, SWTMT Strategic Solutions, PlastiBioFuel, and Leading Valor Connections, based in Haslet, Texas. I design and ship production AI systems across federal contracting, deep tech, govtech, cleantech, and quantitative trading.

What services do you offer?

Custom software development, business and personal automation, custom bid engine creation for government contractors, and hands-on AI implementation and training for teams and owners.

How fast can you build?

Fast. The flagship land-intelligence platform on this page went from concept to a working product in six days — a scope most teams would staff for the better part of a year. Most engagements show working software inside the first week.

Where are you located, and who do you work with?

Haslet, Texas — Dallas–Fort Worth. Remote-first, working with businesses and owners anywhere in the United States.

How do we start?

Email mward4102@gmail.com or use the form below. The first consultation is free — bring the problem, leave with a plan.

Contact

Have something hard to build?

Tell me what you're trying to solve. If it can be learned, designed, and shipped, I want to see it — the stranger and more ambitious, the better.

  1. Send the problem. Two sentences is plenty.
  2. Free 30-minute call. We scope it together.
  3. You get a plan. Timeline, approach, and price — then I build.
Or reach me directly mward4102@gmail.com