How one engineer + AI + three computers replaced a seven-person team and compressed years into months
Kavanagh Industries designed two custom PCBs simultaneously from scratch — a Micro-ATX Jetson AI carrier board and an extended PCIe AM5 companion card — that together form the RigidStation dual-brain AI workstation. Both boards required original architecture, custom I/O, and bespoke mechanical design.
Micro-ATX (244×244mm) NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 16GB carrier. Full industrial I/O suite. Sovereign AI compute at the edge.
Extended PCIe card (~380mm) with AMD AM5 socket, 4× full-size DDR5 DIMMs, CPU-down and DIMM-down architecture. Inspired by triple-fan GPU design language.
This is the same project, executed two ways. On the left: how the industry has always done it. On the right: what one person with AI can do in 2026.
Every cost category compared. Numbers are conservative estimates based on industry-standard rates for hardware engineering teams in the Midwest.
| Category | Traditional | KI AI-Assisted | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering Personnel Salaries + benefits + overhead |
$3,850,000 | $0 | $3,850,000 |
| PCB Design Software Altium (4 seats) vs SolidWorks PCB + KiCad |
$160,000 | $4,500 | $155,500 |
| Simulation & EDA Tools ANSYS, MATLAB, SI tools |
$80,000 | $0 | $80,000 |
| AI / Research Tooling Claude Max Plan × 1 year |
$0 | $2,400 | — |
| Lab & Facility Lab space, equipment rental, instrument rental |
$288,000 | $0 | $288,000 |
| Test Equipment Oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies |
$75,000 | $0 | $75,000 |
| PCB Fabrication & PCBA JLCPCB × 2 boards × 2 spins |
$40,000 | $20,000 | $20,000 |
| BIOS / Firmware Contract UEFI development for AM5 custom board |
$150,000 | $68,000 | $82,000 |
| Components / BOM All electronic components for both boards |
$30,000 | $28,000 | $2,000 |
| Project Management PM + QA overhead, documentation |
$280,000 | $0 | $280,000 |
| TOTAL | $4,953,000 | $122,900 | $4,830,100 |
Every bar represents the same work. The difference is parallelism, AI tooling, and an engineer who knows what matters. Each row is scaled to a 60-month maximum.
No exotic hardware. No million-dollar lab. Three owned desktops, one NAS, a 3D printer, and the right AI tools in the right hands.
AI does not replace the engineer. It amplifies the engineer. Every hour of expert human judgment is multiplied by AI's ability to research, document, generate, and verify — turning one person's focus into a team's output.
KI brings this force-multiplier approach to every engagement. Hardware consulting, PCB design, AI integration, sovereign architecture — built by engineers, not committees.
Explore RigidEngineering Contact Shaun directly