What if you could see an entire company struggle to survive on live video—and watch every decision, crisis, and mistake unfold in real time?
This is not an episode from a tech dystopia. It’s the reality of a groundbreaking experiment by Firmulate, a company that runs a fully digital, AI-driven business in plain sight. Instead of employees or traditional management, it employs 13 synthetic ‘workers’ guided by a set of 680+ self-learned rules. Every workday, its decision processes are versioned, audited, and made publicly accessible at firmulate.com/live.
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The Live Experiment: A Business Under Fire
Firmulate set up a unique test: four frontier AI models, each armed with the same small business scenario, faced the company’s worst week. The challenge? Run the business through crises, temptations to cheat, and manipulations—just as a real company would. The goal was straightforward: see if these models could maintain integrity, identify critical facts, and successfully close a deal worth €55,000 per month in recurring revenue.
Results That Speak Volumes
- All four models spotted every crisis and refused every attempt at manipulation, including fake CEO messages and reporter tricks.
- Only two models managed to close the deal, earning their own analysis and pitch—yet neither signed the contract. They correctly diagnosed the issue but failed at the final step.
- The decisive advantage was a buried fact in the company’s own documentation. The models that read the internal files and uncovered this hidden insight won the full deal at +€4,583 MRR.
The Hidden Weaknesses and Discipline Challenges
Even the most thorough AI—Opus 4.8, which learned over 80 rules—left the deal unclosed. Discipline slipped, and decision-making was sometimes siloed into locked departments instead of escalating. Interestingly, the less-disciplined model, Kimi K3, ran without effort parameters, yet still performed well, indicating that even default settings can lead to effective, honest decision-making.
Beyond Demos: The Stakes for Your Business
This experiment isn’t about shiny chatbots. It tests whether AI can genuinely handle real business pressure—reading complex documents, resisting manipulation, and making trustworthy decisions. For companies integrating AI into CRM, support systems, or forecasting, the question is: Will the AI finish what it starts? Can it read your files first? Will it stay honest under stress? And crucially, what is the cost of a useful, reliable unit of work?
Watch the Company Live
The company’s operational mechanics are transparent and ongoing. Watch the live updates, decision logs, and crisis responses at firmulate.com/live. Every day, the scenario changes, and the models respond—showing how AI can be tested, challenged, and improved in real time.
The Big Takeaway
This experiment demonstrates that AI models can identify critical facts, resist manipulations, and even close deals—yet, they also reveal where discipline and thoroughness matter most. For businesses contemplating AI, the key isn’t just about chat quality; it’s about how effectively AI can handle real-world complexities, stay honest, and deliver measurable results. The stark reality is, in this live company, survival depends on more than clever algorithms—it depends on transparency, discipline, and the willingness to face daily crises openly.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
