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Too Much Information. Not Enough Time. This Jacksonville Startup Is Building a Way Through.

Too Much Information. Not Enough Time. This Jacksonville Startup Is Building a Way Through.

From investigative intelligence buried in hundreds of hours of audio to government opportunities hidden among thousands of solicitations, Xpert WorX is building technology to help organizations find what matters before it gets lost in the volume.

The clue is somewhere in 500 hours of audio.

Maybe it’s a name that keeps coming up. A relationship between two people nobody has connected yet. A conversation that suddenly gives context to another one recorded weeks earlier. For an investigative team, finding it could mean listening for hundreds of hours before anyone even knows what matters.

Now move into a completely different organization. A government contractor is searching through solicitations for the handful that actually match what the company can do. A nonprofit is looking for the right grant. A university team is trying to spot a funding opportunity worth pursuing before the window closes.

The stakes are very different, but the problem underneath them is remarkably similar: the information they need may already exist. There’s simply more of it than their teams have time to manually analyze.

Chris Budihas and Tyler Rund have built a Northeast Florida startup around that problem. Registered in St. Johns, Florida, and built to serve clients globally, Xpert WorX is creating AI-powered tools for government, public safety, nonprofits, research organizations and businesses pursuing public-sector opportunities.

Xpert WorX calls the result “decision advantage”: reducing the noise, surfacing what matters and getting source-grounded information in front of the professionals responsible for deciding what happens next.

One Company. Two Very Different Searches.

The first is investigative. IntelXpert is built for corrections, law enforcement, prosecutors, task forces and other public-safety organizations dealing with volumes of information that can quickly overwhelm the teams responsible for making sense of it.

The platform can rapidly transcribe and analyze recorded audio in different formats alongside written material and images, helping surface important conversations, threats, relationships, patterns and potential investigative leads.

But perhaps the more interesting part is what happens after the technology finds something.

IntelXpert ties its findings back to source audio and timestamps, allowing the investigator to return to the original material, examine the context and verify what the technology surfaced.

That distinction matters, especially in environments where decisions can have serious consequences. Xpert WorX isn’t building technology to take judgment away from the professional doing the work.

It’s building technology to help that professional find what deserves their judgment in the first place.

The second search happens in a completely different environment. Xpert Radar is built for businesses, nonprofits, researchers and business-development teams navigating government contracts, grants, SBIR/STTR programs and related opportunities.

Finding an opportunity is only the beginning. Does it actually fit the organization? Is it worth pursuing? Which opportunities deserve limited business-development resources?

Xpert Radar is designed to help answer those questions by finding, qualifying and prioritizing opportunities. And it doesn’t stop once the right opportunity is found. Xpert Radar is designed to help qualify and prioritize what is worth pursuing—and then write the proposal response.

On the surface, IntelXpert and Xpert Radar live in very different worlds. One might help an investigator find a critical lead buried inside hundreds of hours of conversations; the other might help an organization find—and pursue—the opportunity it otherwise could have missed.

But Xpert WorX isn’t really building around an industry.

It’s building around the haystack.

They Didn’t Start With AI. They Started With the Work.

There is no shortage of companies trying to figure out where AI fits. Chris and Tyler came at it from the other direction.

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Both are retired U.S. Army veterans. Chris, originally from Jacksonville, is a retired Army Colonel and former Marine whose career involved leading organizations, planning in complex environments and making decisions when information was incomplete or overwhelming. Tyler is also a retired Army veteran and a software technologist who has helped turn those operational problems into scalable software.

Their experience gave them a problem before they ever had a product: decision-makers can be surrounded by enormous amounts of useful information and still struggle to get to the piece that actually matters.

That idea became the foundation of Xpert WorX. Rather than beginning with what AI can do and searching for somewhere to use it, Chris and Tyler say they begin with the mission: understand the decision that has to be made, identify the data burden slowing it down and build technology that helps the professional responsible for that decision get there faster.

That’s also why they push back against the idea that AI-enabled software has to mean replacing people.

In the environments Xpert WorX is targeting, the professionals bring something the software isn’t intended to replace: context, expertise, accountability and judgment.

The technology can take on the volume, but the context, expertise, accountability and judgment remain with the professional deciding what that information means.

Building the Technology Is Only Half the Battle

The irony of Xpert WorX’s story is that some of the things that make its products interesting also make them difficult to build—and difficult to sell.

IntelXpert is entering environments where the ability to trace and verify information matters.

Corrections departments, law enforcement, prosecutors and other public-safety organizations need to think about security, accuracy and where information came from, particularly when that information could influence consequential decisions.

That has forced Chris and Tyler to think beyond whether the software can find something interesting.

Can the user trace it?

Can they verify it?

Can they trust the process that brought it to their attention?

Then comes the challenge that has little to do with code. Getting new technology into government and large organizations can mean navigating established workflows, institutional requirements and multiple layers of decision-making. Even when someone understands the product immediately, reaching the person who can move a pilot or deployment forward is another matter.

Xpert Radar enters a different market but faces its own version of the adoption challenge.

Businesses, nonprofits, universities, grant professionals and business-development teams already have ways of finding opportunities and developing responses. Xpert WorX has to demonstrate why changing those workflows is worth it.

And that’s where the company is now.

The products are built. The next challenge is getting them into enough of the right hands.

The Next Breakthrough May Not Happen in the Code

Over the next 12 months, Chris and Tyler want to expand paid pilots and full deployments of IntelXpert with corrections departments, law enforcement, prosecutors and other public-safety organizations, while growing Xpert Radar among government contractors, nonprofits, universities, grant professionals and business-development teams.

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They’re also looking for:

Strategic and channel partners

Government introductions

Institutional users

Investment relationships

Greater visibility with organizations facing large-scale information-analysis problems

And that’s where building Xpert WorX in Northeast Florida becomes part of the story.

The company may be serving a global market, but Northeast Florida has already played a role in shaping what Chris and Tyler are building. Conversations with investigators, government professionals, grant writers and business-development teams have given them feedback grounded in real workflows—not theoretical uses for technology.

Now that network can potentially do something else.

Somewhere in this community is a public-safety leader who immediately understands why IntelXpert matters. There’s a government contractor tired of searching through opportunities that go nowhere. There’s a nonprofit, university connection, enterprise partner, technology partner or investor who might see where Xpert WorX fits.

Xpert WorX is building technology to find the important thing hidden inside an overwhelming amount of information.

Their next important find may have nothing to do with data.

It may be the right connection, right here in Northeast Florida.

Connect with Xpert WorX

Co-Founders: Chris Budihas & Tyler Rund
St. Johns, Florida

Website: xpert-worx.com
IntelXpert: IntelXpert.com
Xpert Radar: XpertRadar.com
Email: chris.budihas@xpert-worx.com

LinkedIn: Chris Budihas  |  Tyler Rund

Visit Xpert WorX →

Startup Community Spotlight

Startup Community Spotlight is a JAX Business Calendar storytelling series created to help more people discover the founders, ideas, and young companies being built in our community.

For us, discovering them is only the first step.

If Xpert WorX made you think of a public-safety leader, government contractor, nonprofit, university, strategic partner or investor Chris and Tyler should know, make the introduction.

The connection that moves this Northeast Florida startup forward may already be somewhere in your network.

Xpert WorX
Xpert WorX

Startup — St. Johns, Florida

Founded by retired U.S. Army veterans Chris Budihas and Tyler Rund, Xpert WorX builds AI-powered tools that deliver “decision advantage” to government, public safety, nonprofits, research organizations and businesses. Its products include IntelXpert, which transcribes and analyzes audio, documents and images for public-safety investigations with findings tied back to source, and Xpert Radar, which finds, qualifies and prioritizes government contracts, grants and SBIR/STTR opportunities and helps write the proposal response.

Website: xpert-worx.com

25 N Market Street, Ste 113
Jacksonville, FL 32202