Professional Profile · August 2026
Builder and investor in AI infrastructure and AI security. Founder of McKinley Labs. Former CTO of News Corp, AOL, Merrill Lynch, and GE Capital. Board Member, Equifax. Wharton.
About
John McKinley is a builder, investor, and board-level technology executive with over three decades of experience leading large-scale technology transformations at some of the world's most consequential organizations — Merrill Lynch, AOL, News Corp, and GE Capital — before turning to founding and backing the next generation of AI companies.
At McKinley Labs he has built three AI security products from scratch: ThreatVec, an AI Agent Security Posture Management platform for continuous red team analysis across enterprise agent portfolios; Bastion, an AI gateway that governs what reaches a model — classifying every prompt, stripping PII, hard-blocking regulated data fail-closed, and writing a hash-chained audit record of every interaction; and Snapper, an AI agent security platform that governs agents from application intent down to kernel enforcement with an eBPF runtime sentinel and self-learning sandboxing.
He has been investing in AI since 2007 — from Powerset's early natural language processing (acquired by Microsoft, integrated into Bing) through Hypergiant, DeepMoney.ai, and now Cognitum One. His portfolio across Great Falls Ventures has produced thirteen exits to acquirers including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Symantec, and Magic Leap. He has served on the Equifax board since 2008, currently chairs its Technology Committee, and sits on its Audit Committee.
Current Roles
McKinley Labs, LLC
Founder
Full-time · Great Falls, Virginia
Founded to build AI security infrastructure for the enterprise age of autonomous agents.
ThreatVecAn AI Agent Security Posture Management platform that gives enterprises continuous visibility into every agent running across their environment — what exists, what it can access, and where it deviates from policy. Continuously assesses posture and surfaces misconfigurations, excess privileges, and behavioral drift before they become attack surface. threatvec.com ↗
BastionAn AI agent gateway that governs content and sensitivity rather than cost or access. Classifies every prompt, de-identifies PII, and hard-blocks regulated data fail-closed before anything reaches a model. Routes each request to the cheapest capable model and writes a tamper-evident, hash-chained audit record of what was sent, to whom, and why. bastionplane.ai ↗
SnapperAn AI agent security platform that governs agents from application intent down to kernel enforcement. Pairs an eBPF runtime sentinel with Landlock/Seatbelt sandboxing, driven by self-learning loops that adapt faster than the threat. snapperprotect.com ↗
Cognitum One
Strategic Advisor & Founding Investor
Part-time · United States
Advising on product positioning, investor narrative, and partnership development for Cognitum One, a sovereign agentic AI platform for the enterprise. Cognitum's open-source AI portfolio — ruflo (swarm orchestration), ruvector (vector database), and ruview (edge AI with cloud sync) — is used by millions of developers and forms the foundation for owning the AI orchestration layer across the full compute plane. Joined as a founding investor alongside Mark Templeton (former CEO of Citrix) and Dr. Greg Lavender (former CTO of Intel).
Equifax
Board Member
Chairman, Technology Committee · Member, Audit Committee
Responsible for board-level review of AI security measures, AI employment in the software engineering function, and cloud migration progress. Chairs the committee overseeing technology strategy and risk for one of the world's largest data and analytics companies.
Great Falls Ventures
Founder
Seed & Early-Stage Investment · Advisory
A seed and early-stage investment and advisory firm focused on AI, search, community, communications, and mobile applications. Has sourced, advised, and exited thirteen portfolio companies since 2007. Active advisory work spans AI applications for inventory management, strategic planning for cloud hosting providers, expert witness engagements, and investment due diligence across security and mobile sectors.
Catalyst Investors
Advisor
New York City Metropolitan Area
Advisor and portfolio company consultant for Catalyst Investors, a growth equity firm founded in 1999 with over $1 billion deployed across more than 50 companies. The firm backs B2B technology businesses at the inflection point from startup to expansion, with an AI thesis that favors customer-first solutions embedded in workflow-owning software over standalone tooling.
NomadGo, Inc.
Strategic Advisor
Part-time · Remote
Helping bring AI into the medical technology and food services space. Focused on on-premise inventory management using advanced AI image recognition and item counts via a combination of video and LIDAR detection technology.
Colossal Biosciences
Strategic Advisor
Part-time
Advising Colossal Biosciences, which is using CRISPR technology and engineering breakthroughs in biosciences and genetics to restore extinct species — including the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf — the first company to achieve de-extinction in history. Colossal is building radical new software tools and technologies to advance the science of genomics overall.
Recent Past Roles
trustme.ai
Strategic Advisor
United States
Advisory to trustme.ai, using advanced AI to bring sophisticated risk management and security to the SMB market.
DeepMoney.ai
Strategic Advisor
Colombia
Deepmoney.ai uses unique AI technology for proprietary trading across a wide variety of asset classes.
Workspot, Inc.
Strategic Advisor
Part-time · San Francisco Bay Area
Advised Workspot on its disruptive Desktop-as-a-Service model, offering enterprise desktops with better security and economics than traditional VDI players.
Earlier Career — C-Suite & Executive Leadership
Prior to founding Great Falls Ventures in 2007, John served as a technology executive at some of the largest and most complex organizations in the world — running engineering organizations of thousands of people, managing technology budgets in the hundreds of millions, and leading digital transformations that reshaped entire industries.
News Corp
Chief Technology Officer
AOL Technologies
CTO & President
Merrill Lynch
EVP & Chief Technology Officer
GE Capital
Chief Technology Officer
Ernst & Young
Partner
Investment Exits via Great Falls Ventures
13 exits since 2008 — to Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Symantec, Magic Leap, and others.
Published Writing
August 2026
I don't want AI that thinks like McKinsey. I want an AI that does what McKinsey never could.
A write-up on using AI agents for strategic planning — a market entry analysis task used as a real-world test of agentic strategy work.
February 2026
From $1,000 Drones to $1 Trillion Selloffs: Mapping the Real AI Disruption
Evaluating AI infrastructure and enterprise software investments through the lens of the current market correction — mapping the rolling wave of AI-driven market dislocations.
February 2026
Applying an AI agent (OpenClaw) armed with the scary ability to pay for things on a real-world, complex task — folly or breakthrough (or neither)?
A real-world test of what happens when you ask an AI agent to plan and book an 8-day trip to New Zealand — examining the gap between the promise and reality of autonomous AI action.
Education
University of Pennsylvania — The Wharton School
Business · Finance · Strategy