listen to this articleTeaching companies how to apply generative AI to work has become a full-time job this year for a local entrepreneur who wants to help lead the Midstate into the AI revolution.
For Andrew Kochanowski and Adam Marsh, finding a niche in the rapidly expanding field of AI means understanding the technology and how quickly it's evolving, but also giving it a local, accessible face at a time when technology can feel impersonal.
Marsh, president and owner of Spring Grove-based Ledge Inc., a quality control consultant for manufacturers, has given nearly 70 talks on AI since becoming familiar with the technology last year. Its efforts include combining traditional engineering services with AI tools that streamline daily operations.
“We're not trying to take what they're good at out of their hands,” Marsh said. “We're trying to get them better at something they're not good at, and that's a lot of paperwork.”
Kochanowski, founder and CEO of Harrisburg-based data center Alerify, which started his business in 2024, started seeing AI this year as a unique opportunity to differentiate his business.
Alerify customers typically use this center to privately store corporate data, with redundancy that may be too expensive to install on site. With significant growth in generative AI in 2025, Kochanowski sees an opportunity for data centers to increase computing power and become places for local businesses to access private AI servers.
“As a data center, we're pretty bland. It's colocation, private cloud servers, or disaster recovery. That was like three swim lanes,” he said. “But once we started learning about AI, it became a big differentiator and caught the attention of our customers.”
Their surge in demand reflects broader changes in the central states. Businesses want to use AI to automate routine tasks and explore new tools, but many lack the training, infrastructure, and secure systems to do so responsibly, creating a growing demand for local experts to help fill that gap.
Education comes first
Mr. Marsh and Mr. Kochanowski both spoke about how companies can take advantage of generative AI. Mr. Marsh spoke from the perspective of the many applications available to manufacturers in the region, and Mr. Kochanowski from his understanding of the infrastructure.
They both agree that they currently spend nearly 75% of their time on education.
Marsh said that when he first speaks with clients, he often wants to solve big problems on day one, but finds that starting with small tasks increases confidence in the software's capabilities.
“Most people are in the crawling stage of this problem,” he said. “If the goal is to crawl, walk, and run, they're just getting started. So give them an AI policy, connect them to the software, and start learning.”
Local connectivity to software also helps bridge the large gap between the companies creating the software and the end users. Marsh compared today's generative AI tools to the early internet, adding that a common misconception is the expectation that AI tools should function as glorified search engines.
“It's an interesting world where the AI guys are at the very high end and the manufacturers are at the low end. And we're trying to get them somewhere in the middle,” he said. “When you bring AI into your enterprise, this is unlike any other software you've ever bought. Before, when they were buying software, they were buying software to solve a solution. Now they're buying a tool that can solve many solutions across the company, and they might not even know right away which solution or which problem they're trying to solve.”
make it local
Marsh and Kochanowski recognized the benefits of working together to provide regional businesses with local resources to enhance their AI-powered operations.
Combining the two gives businesses a way to use AI without sending sensitive data to large public cloud platforms.
Marsh can provide businesses with Ledge's proprietary software that uses generative AI software for many popular options, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Businesses can then use Alerify's datacenters to privatize their information and ask the AI to only generate responses using a knowledge base secured from Alerify's private servers.
Kochanowski said large companies can host all of this from their own servers, but smaller companies may find the cost prohibitive.
“[Generative AI] “This requires a tremendous amount of horsepower, and that's where the graphics processing unit (GPU) can process that amount of searches and queries and tie all these questions together,” Kochanowski said. So we provide that resource and they can tap into it and use it on a pay-as-you-go basis and pay only for what they use. ”
Today, Marsh and Kochanowski's main competitors are the nation's largest companies, whether it's business products from today's generative AI platforms or large-scale data storage options like Amazon Web Services.
“Amazon isn't going to pick up the phone and answer questions. They're worried about General Motors, Harley-Davidson, Georgia-Pacific,” Kochanowski said. “But for us, it's all about jumping above everything and solving it right away because we understand that the problem is all our neighbors and our colleagues and colleagues in this area.”
the price of stopping
What Marsh and Kochanowski are seeing on the ground reflects national trends. The majority of companies are experimenting with AI but are not yet committed to the technology.
A 2025 study by Chicago-based consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that nearly two-thirds of 1,993 participants from 105 countries said their organizations had not yet begun scaling AI across their companies, while a similar 62% said their companies were experimenting with AI.
They argue that one of the biggest risks to companies is not the misuse of AI, but rather its use by leaders without understanding where and how it is being applied.
“If you're a factory manager or a CEO or president and you think your employees aren't using AI yet, you're completely off base,” Kochanowski said, adding that today's college graduates are coming into the company knowing how to use and access AI.
“If you can give your employees the right tools to keep this private without involving a large public cloud, your company will run better and your employees will be more efficient,” he said.
For Marsh, the answer is to get ahead of its use and appoint an AI champion at your company to put together an AI policy.
“From there, I like to show them the use cases because it gets their minds going,” Marsh said. “And they look at it and say, 'Oh, can you do this? Can you do that?'” And it snowballs from there. We like sessions where we can sit down with them and consider the possibilities. ”
