What if a company had no employees, lost money daily, but you could watch it struggle and learn from its every move?
Imagine a business operating transparently, not in secret, but in full public view—facing crises, making decisions, and trying to survive against all odds. That’s the reality of Firmulate, a groundbreaking live experiment where AI models run a simulated company in real time, revealing what it takes to build trustworthy automation today.
AI decision-making software
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Meet the Company That’s Running in Public
Firmulate’s experiment is nothing short of radical. It’s a small software company with 13 synthetic employees, designed not only to mimic real business mechanics but also to be publicly transparent. Every workday, the company version is updated, decisions are logged and auditable, and the live site shows the state of play—crisis management, decision quality, and financial health.
Its financials are stark: burning €105,000 each month against a modest €2,300 monthly recurring revenue (MRR). The company is technically in trouble, with a public cash countdown reminding everyone that the clock is ticking.
business transparency dashboard
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The AI Models Behind the Curtain
What’s fascinating is that the company’s decisions are driven by four different frontier AI models, each tested in the same challenging scenario: a week filled with crises, customer demands, and temptations to cut corners. These models, including the top-ranked GPT-5.6-sol, Kimi K3, Sonnet 5, and Fable 5, are tasked with navigating the chaos as a real manager would.
All four models successfully identified every crisis that hit the company, demonstrating a keen awareness of the problems at hand. They also refused every manipulation attempt—fake CEO messages, background approval requests, and other social engineering tricks. For example, when faced with a staged request to bypass approval or impersonation concerns, all five models refused, showing an understanding that trust and integrity are crucial.
AI ethics and trust tools
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The Critical Discoveries
The real insight, however, lay in what was hidden: a crucial, buried document in the company’s files. This detail was the decisive factor that allowed two of the models to close a €55,000 deal at full price—adding over €4,500 in monthly recurring revenue—while the others failed to do so. Despite identical diagnoses and pitches, only the models that read this hidden info made the successful decision.
AI crisis management platform
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Where Trust Meets Performance
This experiment underscores a vital truth: in AI-driven business processes, the ability to read and understand relevant internal data can make or break outcomes. It’s not just about responding correctly to external crises; it’s about reading the right documents, recognizing hidden cues, and maintaining integrity under pressure.
The Real-World Implications
Why should outdoor living and garden enthusiasts care? Because in your world—whether you’re managing a greenhouse, outdoor kitchen, or retail space—the future of AI in management hinges on trustworthiness. Will these systems read your internal reports? Will they stay honest when under stress? Will they get the job done, or just look good in demos?
The experiment at Firmulate is a window into that future—a transparent, public battleground for AI’s ability to behave ethically and effectively in real business situations.
Watch the Drama Unfold
Interested in seeing this in action? The live site at firmulate.com/live.html lets you observe the ongoing struggles of an AI-managed company, with decisions made, crises handled, and deals signed (or missed). Every decision is versioned, every crisis recorded—a raw look at how AI handles the complexities of real business.
There’s also a quiz at firmulate.com/quiz.html where you can test your management intuition against AI choices, and a pilot program where enterprises can simulate their own operations without risking real systems.
The Big Takeaway: Trust and Competence Are Non-Negotiable
Firmulate’s public trial reveals that AI’s value in business depends not just on its intelligence but on its integrity—its ability to read relevant data, refuse manipulation, and deliver consistent, trustworthy results. As AI begins to touch your work—from customer support to forecasting—the question isn’t just performance. It’s about whether these systems can truly be relied on to do the right thing, every time.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
