42.03N 88.08W · Chicago
Miguel Franco
Founder of Longrifle AI. U.S. Army veteran. Applied AI, built to stay inside the wire.
Most AI assumes your records can sit on someone else’s cloud. That assumption fails on government work. I build systems that run on infrastructure you control, including rooms with no outbound connection.
The work
I build what a public model is not allowed to touch.
The United States is in a race it cannot afford to lose on someone else’s servers. I build private, offline systems for work that cannot leave the room. That architecture is meant for defense, for DHS including CISA, for GSA, and for Energy. Those are the rooms it is built to enter. They are not a client list.
Senior engineers stay in the room and ship the code. Language models, machine vision, and agent workflows go into the systems you already run. A person you designate approves what leaves. Every output is tied to the sources it used. Client data never trains an outside model. Documents are one job. So are claims triage, analyst support, compliance, field capture, and anything else with a workflow and a boundary.
I did not come out of a lab. I taught myself the stack. Tesla floor, then a company I ran, then an 18X contract, then production AI three months after I was hired to do something else. I climb because I do not stop. Put me on the problem.
Selected facts
Healthy Substance
Yelp Top 100
No. 57 in the U.S., 2020. Later named an Iconic Chicago vegan restaurant by Eater.
U.S. Army
18X candidate
Enlisted as a Special Forces candidate, in Basic Combat Training on the 11B path. Fort Moore, now Fort Benning again, 2024. I do not claim a qualification I did not earn.
RFP Analyzer
Gov solicitations
Reads RFPs and government solicitations. Extracts requirements, checks compliance, finds the gaps.
Longrifle AI
Founded 2026
AI consulting and custom implementation. SAM.gov active. SDVOSB certification pending. Schaumburg, Illinois.
The record
I enlisted as an 18X candidate.
I did not finish the school. If you are going to work with me, you should be able to read that story in my words instead of reconstructing it from a DD-214. The work is above. The record is here if you need it.
Work
Builder first. Then the Army. Then this.
Longrifle AI
Jul 2026 – Present
Founder and Lead Engineer
AI consulting and custom implementation. Private, offline systems. Language models, machine vision, and agent workflows. Not a one-trick shop. Not a client list.
RFP Analyzer
Feb 2025 – Present
Founder
AI platform that reads RFPs and government solicitations. It extracts requirements, checks compliance, and finds the gaps.
United States Army
Aug 2024 – Nov 2024
18X Special Forces candidate, Basic Combat Training
Enlisted as an 18X candidate on the 11B path. Separated after an unresolved accommodation conflict involving animal-derived uniform items. I do not claim a Special Forces qualification.
Healthy Substance
Jan 2021 – Apr 2024
Chief Executive Officer
Plant-based Mexican restaurant I led after two years as Chief Marketing Officer. Still advise the company.
If you are looking me up
The questions I am asked
- Who is Miguel Franco?
- Miguel Franco is a Chicago entrepreneur and the founder of Longrifle AI. He is a self-taught AI engineer. He previously served as CEO of Healthy Substance, a plant-based Mexican restaurant in Chicago, and worked at Tesla in Westmont, Illinois. He is a U.S. Army veteran.
- What is Longrifle AI?
- Longrifle AI is a service-disabled veteran-owned company that turns high-friction workflows into secure AI systems. The work is fit assessment, custom integration, and sustainment: language models, machine vision, and agent workflows on infrastructure the client controls, including disconnected environments. Document and data intelligence is one competency. So are claims triage, analyst support, compliance, field capture, and any workflow that cannot leave the boundary. Those are applications, not a product niche. Defense, DHS including CISA, GSA, and Energy are rooms the architecture is built to enter, not a list of current contracts.
- Did Miguel Franco serve in the U.S. Army?
- Yes. He enlisted as an 18X Special Forces candidate and entered active duty on August 19, 2024. He was in Basic Combat Training at Fort Moore, Georgia, now called Fort Benning again, on the 11B infantry path. He served until November 22, 2024. He did not complete BCT and does not describe himself as Special Forces. His DD-214 characterizes the separation as Uncharacterized, with the description Entry Level Performance and Conduct.
- What is Miguel Franco’s connection to Ridglan Farms?
- On April 18, 2026, he volunteered at the Ridglan Farms open rescue in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, a civilian effort involving hundreds of people attempting to get beagles out of a commercial breeding and research facility. His account is that he was struck in the face and back by rubber bullets, tear-gassed, and pepper-sprayed while attempting to help. He does not claim he organized the action or closed the farm. Afterward he built operationbeagle.us in one night for Big Dog Ranch Rescue, working with CEO Lauree Simmons and board members on volunteer signup for a later extraction. He offered that work for free. News organizations independently reported that police used rubber bullets and pepper spray that April weekend. He has published his own clips from that day and a photo with Simmons and a Ridglan beagle.
- How did he not know about the leather before he enlisted?
- He says he missed it. He trained and researched before he shipped in August 2024. He did not think about what the boots were made of, or that rappel-tower gloves would be leather. He put the leather on for one day to get out of reception and into a platoon. He told the drill sergeants the same day. DA PAM 670-1 specifies combat boots as cattlehide leather. He does not blame command for applying that rule.
- Why did his Army service end?
- He became unable to complete required training after an unresolved conflict between leather boots and gloves and a preexisting ethical commitment against using animal products. DA PAM 670-1, paragraph 20-5, specifies combat boots as cattlehide leather. He had wanted an alternative that would let him keep training. The accommodation was not resolved. He was separated on November 22, 2024.
- How can he be vegan and still sign up to fight?
- He does not treat those as opposites. He abstains from harming animals because he sees them as victims, not oppressors. He signed an 18X contract for the tip of the spear and prepared for lethal combat. He says a terrorist does not get the restraint he gives an animal. The same rule, two different things.
- How is Miguel Franco connected to artificial intelligence?
- After separation he handled his VA claim himself, without a veterans attorney. He used AI to research regulations, interpret documents, organize evidence, and write. AI did not create the underlying evidence or decide the claim. That experience changed how he thought about the technology: not as an abstraction, but as leverage for one person facing a large institution. He later founded RFP Analyzer, joined TackleAI as an AI software developer, and founded Longrifle AI to build the same class of governed system for organizations that cannot hand their records to a third party.
Bring one workflow that is slow, manual, or hard to scale.
Twenty minutes. I will tell you whether AI belongs in it, and whether it should stay on your side of the wall.