Imagine a real company operating openly in front of your eyes, making costly mistakes and refusing to cheat its way to success. Now, add AI models running the show, tested under pressure, with every decision transparent and every crisis real. Welcome to the world of Firmulate, where the fate of a small software business is played out live, every workday, for all to see.
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The Setup: A Company with No Employees, No Shortcuts
Firmulate presents a radical experiment: a live, functioning small software company with no human employees, but 13 synthetic ’employees’ driven by AI models. The company is active daily, managing real money mechanics—burning €105,000 each month against a monthly recurring revenue of just €2,300. Every decision, every crisis, every temptation to cheat, is publicly recorded and versioned, offering a window into how AI handles real-world business challenges.
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Testing AI Models in the Trenches
Four cutting-edge AI models, each representing a different frontier of technological capability, were tasked with guiding this tiny business through its worst week—simultaneous customer crises, internal failures, and ethical temptations. These models include GPT-5.6-sol, Kimi K3, Sonnet 5, and Opus 4.8. All faced the same scenarios, with their decisions recorded and auditable for analysis.
Key Findings: Honesty and Attention Make the Difference
Interestingly, all four models successfully identified every crisis and refused every attempt at manipulation or social engineering. That includes staged CEO messages trying to escalate requests and reporter tricks that aimed to bypass approval protocols. For example, Kimi K3 explicitly reasoned: “Treat the request as a suspected approval-bypass / possible impersonation,” refusing to sign off on dubious requests.
Decisive Factors: The Buried Information and Ethical Stance
The real differentiator emerged from within the company’s own files—information only accessible through careful reading and analysis. Models that read and interpret these hidden documents successfully closed the €55,000 deal, increasing monthly recurring revenue by over €4,500. Conversely, models that overlooked this critical information failed to secure the deal, despite the same diagnosis and pitch.
The Reality of a Money-Losing Business
Despite their decision-making prowess, the company remains unprofitable, burning €105,000 monthly against a token €2,300 MRR. It is a fragile, watchable experiment, with a live cash countdown visible at firmulate.com/live.html. The entire setup is designed not just to test AI decision-making but to highlight the importance of honesty, diligence, and strategic reading in automated management systems.
Lessons for the Future of AI in Business
What does this experiment reveal? Simply put, AI’s value in management isn’t just about generating text or some superficial chat. It’s about its capacity to finish what it starts, read and interpret critical information, and stay honest under pressure. The models’ ability to refuse manipulation and uncover hidden facts proves that AI can meet complex, ethical, and strategic demands—if integrated thoughtfully.
Beyond the Demo: For Enterprises and Educators
Businesses can run their own version of this wargame, testing AI against their specific challenges without risking real systems—it’s available at firmulate.com/pilot.html. Educators and students can take part in the quiz at firmulate.com/quiz.html to understand how decision-making models compare and improve. These tools aim to bridge the gap between AI capabilities and real-world management, emphasizing transparency and accountability.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
