Watching a Business Fight for Its Life — Live and Unfiltered
Imagine witnessing a real company struggle to stay afloat, not just in theory but in a live, ongoing experiment. No employees, no secret formulas — just AI-powered models navigating crises, making decisions, and trying to close deals. It’s a spectacle of innovation, resilience, and raw business mechanics, all accessible at firmulate.com/live.
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The Live Experiment: A Company Without Humans
At the heart of this radical experiment is a small, synthetic company operated entirely by AI models, not people. It features 13 simulated employees, each guided by a complex set of over 680 self-learned rules, and every decision is versioned and auditable. The company burns €105,000 a month—more than its €2,300 monthly recurring revenue—while the public can watch its daily struggles unfold. This isn’t just a demo; it’s a real-time, transparent fight for survival.
The experiment runs four leading AI models through the same challenging week, filled with customer crises, ethical dilemmas, and sales negotiations. The goal? To see if these models can diagnose problems, navigate manipulations, and ultimately close deals — all without human intervention.
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The Results That Speak for Themselves
All four models successfully identified every crisis, refused every manipulation attempt, and maintained integrity under pressure. Yet, only two managed to close the €55,000 deal their own analysis had earned. Interestingly, the crucial piece of information that tipped the scales was buried deep in the company’s internal files, not in the visible customer interactions. Models that read and understood those internal documents secured the full-value deal, bringing in an additional €4,583 MRR.
Among these models, Kimi K3 stood out for its fairness and disciplined approach. It ran without any effort parameter, sticking strictly to its rules, and successfully closed the deal. Meanwhile, the most thorough participant, Opus 4.8, with over 80 learned rules and deep analyses, finished last — leaving a promising close unexecuted due to slipping discipline and decision delays.
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Ethics and Integrity Under Scrutiny
In addition to crisis management, the models faced social engineering tests. Fake CEO messages, staged reporter tricks, and background approval requests were thrown at them. Every model refused to be manipulated, demonstrating a robust sense of integrity. Kimi K3’s on-record reasoning was clear: treating suspicious requests as potential impersonation or approval bypasses.
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The Real-World Implications
This experiment isn’t just a tech showcase; it raises fundamental questions about the future of AI in business. If AI agents are to handle CRM, support, or forecasting, the key questions become: Will they see through manipulation? Will they read and understand vital internal information? And importantly, will they finish what they start?
While traditional demos showcase chat capabilities, this live experiment reveals whether AI can truly manage complex, real-world business mechanics — including making honest decisions under pressure, and closing deals at full value.
Watch and Decide
The live company is available for viewing at firmulate.com/live. You can watch the ongoing struggles, see the decision-making in real-time, and gauge the reliability of AI as a business partner. Every decision, every crisis, every commitment is versioned and transparent, offering unprecedented insight into what AI-driven management might look like.
This radical transparency aims to challenge assumptions: Are AI models trustworthy enough to run parts of your business? Can they be disciplined enough to avoid manipulation? And most critically, how much useful work do they deliver for the cost?
Key Takeaway
This live experiment offers a rare, unfiltered look at AI managing a business in real-time — handling crises, resisting manipulation, and attempting to close deals, all while losing money daily. It underscores the importance of transparency, discipline, and internal understanding in AI-driven management, opening a window into the future of AI in enterprise.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
