Imagine a company with no human employees, burning through €105,000 every month while earning just €2,300 in revenue. Now, add the twist: you can watch this company battle real crises, make decisions, and stubbornly fight to survive — live, online, in real time. Welcome to the world of Firmulate, where AI models run a simulated business under extreme conditions, revealing what artificial intelligence truly brings to the table in high-stakes management.
The Live Experiment: AI as a Company Manager
At the heart of this bold experiment are four frontier AI models, each tasked with managing the same tiny software company through its worst week. They face identical customers, crises, and temptations, with every decision meticulously versioned and auditable. The goal: see if AI can handle real-world complexity, stay honest under pressure, and make decisions that lead to actual business outcomes.
What the Models Achieved
- All four models identified every crisis and refused every manipulation attempt. In other words, they showed resilience against social engineering tricks, including staged CEO messages and reporter tricks, consistently refusing to bypass controls.
- Despite their vigilance, only two of the four models managed to close a €55,000 deal, which they had identified as the true opportunity. The other two recognized the opportunity but left the deal unexecuted, highlighting discipline slips or missed follow-through.
One key insight was buried deep within the company’s files: a crucial document held the secret to winning a €4,583 monthly recurring revenue (MRR) deal. The models that read and incorporated this information successfully secured the full deal, showing that reading and understanding internal documentation was decisive.
What This Tells Us About AI in Business
While all models demonstrated the ability to detect crises and maintain integrity against social engineering, their execution varied. The model with the most thorough analysis, Opus 4.8, was also the poorest performer in closing deals. It left opportunities on the table, illustrating that deep analysis alone doesn’t guarantee execution discipline. Meanwhile, the Kimi K3 model, which ran with default settings, struck the cleanest balance—closing deals without slipping into shortcuts.
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The Company in Practice: Build-in-Public, Live and Raw
Firmulate’s own setup runs a virtual company with 13 synthetic employees, real money mechanics, and a public cash countdown. Operating with over 680 self-learned rules, it’s a full-blown experiment in build-in-public transparency, with every workday versioned and accessible at firmulate.com/live.html. Watch the company burn €105,000 every month against a modest €2,300 in revenue, trying to stay afloat amid crises and temptations.
Lessons for Business and AI Developers
This experiment underscores a critical point for businesses: the real challenge isn’t just whether AI can generate convincing chat. It’s whether AI can finish what it starts, read internal documentation thoroughly, and maintain honesty under pressure. The models showed they could spot crises and refused social engineering tricks, but only some could follow through on opportunities.
For creators and tech fans, it’s a glimpse into the future of AI-driven management: transparent, auditable, and tested against real-world chaos. These experiments are not just academic; they’re a live demonstration of AI’s potential and limitations in managing complex, money-driven enterprises.
The Firmulate live experiment proves that AI can identify crises and resist manipulation, but execution discipline varies. For businesses, understanding this difference is key to integrating AI into real operations. Watch the company struggle, learn, and adapt in real time at firmulate.com/live.html.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
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