Imagine a business with no human employees, yet daily struggles to stay afloat—and you can watch its every move online. Sounds like science fiction? Not anymore. Welcome to a groundbreaking experiment that reveals what AI can—and can’t—do in the real world of business.
The Live Experiment: A Company in Crisis
At the heart of this story is a real, functioning software company run entirely by artificial intelligence models. Every weekday, 13 synthetic employees—powered by advanced AI—make decisions, face crises, and attempt to close deals. The company’s financials are transparent and publicly accessible at firmulate.com/live.html.
This isn’t just a demo; it’s a real-time, ongoing test of AI’s capacity to manage a business under pressure. The company burns €105,000 each month but earns only €2,300 in recurring revenue. Its cash reserves are ticking down daily, providing a stark backdrop to see whether AI can navigate the perilous waters of business management.
What Happens During the Week?
Each week, the same set of crises, customer requests, and temptations are thrown at the AI team. These are simulated scenarios designed to test decision-making under stress. Every decision—whether to accept a deal, escalate an issue, or ignore a red flag—is meticulously versioned and audit-ready, ensuring transparency and accountability.
Multiple AI models, including the latest frontier models, are pitted against each other in a kind of competition. The goal: see which can best handle the chaos, spot hidden risks, refuse manipulation attempts, and ultimately, close legitimate deals at full price.
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Key Findings from the Experiment
- The four AI models tested successfully identified every crisis and refused every manipulation attempt, such as social engineering tactics designed to bypass approval processes.
- Only two of these models managed to sign the €55,000 deal their own analysis had earned—indicating a discrepancy between diagnosis and action.
- Digging deeper, the real weakness was not in the obvious customer interactions but buried two document references deep within the company’s own files. The models that read these internal documents successfully secured the deal, worth an additional €4,583 in monthly recurring revenue.
Beyond Performance: Trust and Discipline
The experiment also tested social engineering resilience. Fake CEO messages and trick questions by a reporter were all refused by every model, with the Kimi K3 model explicitly treating such requests as potential impersonation or approval-bypass attempts.
Despite the sophisticated AI decision-making, the company’s real-world financials show a grim picture: burning €105,000 each month against just €2,300 in revenue, with a public cash countdown ticking away. Every decision, every move, is visible to the outside world—and every failure is part of the ongoing story.
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The Human Touch—Or Lack Thereof
The company’s team is entirely synthetic, with no human employees involved in daily operations. Yet the system’s performance underscores a critical reality: AI can recognize crises and refuse manipulation, but it still struggles with discipline, follow-through, and nuanced judgment—especially under complex, real-world pressures.
What This Means for Business and AI Adoption
For enterprises contemplating AI integration, the key takeaway isn’t just about chat quality or superficial performance. It’s whether AI can finish what it starts, read the necessary context from internal files, stay honest under pressure, and ultimately, deliver useful work. The ongoing experiment at firmulate.com/live.html provides a live window into these vital questions.
Real companies face real crises, and watching AI companies like this one operate in real time offers invaluable insights into what’s possible—and what’s still out of reach.
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The Bigger Picture
While the business is currently losing money and running on a public countdown, the experiment is a testament to transparency and build-in-public innovation. It demonstrates that even in the most extreme conditions, AI models are capable of identifying risks, refusing unethical requests, and closing deals—though not always at their first attempt.
For decision-makers, the message is clear: AI’s potential in business isn’t just about generating text or answering questions. It’s about managing complex, high-stakes environments where trust, discipline, and thoroughness matter most. Watching this experiment unfold offers a rare, unfiltered glimpse into the future of AI-driven management.
This real-time experiment shows AI can manage crises and refuse manipulation, but struggles with follow-through and discipline. Watch the live company at firmulate.com/live.html.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
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