New lab advances webAI’s mission to build accessible, sovereign, and defensible intelligence for real-world deployment
AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — webAI today announced the appointment of Dr. Paul J. Maykish as Chief Intelligence Officer and the launch of the webAI Intelligence Lab, a dedicated unit focused on building accessible, sovereign, and defensible intelligence across public sector and enterprise environments.
Dr. PJ Maykish joins webAI to lead the newly formed Intelligence Lab after serving as a Vice President for technology strategy at the Special Competitive Studies Project and Director for Technology Competition at the National Security Council. A 24-year veteran of military operations, Maykish previously directed classified research for the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and commanded the U.S. Central Command’s Combined Air Operations Center, including commissioning AI programs in the ISIS war.
Under Dr. Maykish’s leadership, the Intelligence Lab will advance webAI’s long-term vision of Superintelligence built not as a single centralized model, but as a network of interoperable, domain-specific intelligence systems. These systems are designed to collaborate securely, operate locally, and compound in capability over time. All the while delivering practical, deployable improvements to webAI’s platform today.
“Our mission is simple, but non-negotiable: advance towards Artificial Superintelligence that is accessible, sovereign, and defensible,” said David Stout, founder and CEO of webAI. “We believe the future of intelligence is something you own, operate, and trust wherever it is needed. The Intelligence Lab exists to build that future.”
The webAI Intelligence Lab will focus on building systems designed for operational reliability, data sovereignty, and resilience in contested environments. Initial focus areas include:
- On-device and edge intelligence for local execution
- Architectures designed for security, integrity, and adversarial resistance
- Repeatable deployment patterns that scale across organizations and missions
“AI is rapidly becoming operational infrastructure, and the bar is rising,” said Dr. Maykish, Chief Intelligence Officer at webAI. “The Intelligence Lab will build systems that organizations can control end-to-end, from data to models to runtime, with performance and trust that hold up in the real world.”
The launch follows webAI’s recently announced funding and valuation milestone, which is accelerating hiring and investment across product, engineering, and deployment programs to meet growing demand for sovereign AI.
To learn more about webAI and the webAI Intelligence Lab, visit www.webai.com.
About webAI
webAI is the enterprise AI platform that brings AI to your data. Built for mission-critical environments, it enables organizations to build and operate private, custom models with complete data sovereignty, real-time performance, and predictable economics.
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