Claude ran a business in our office

For a large part of 2025, we ran Project Vend: an experiment where we let Claude manage a small business in the Anthropic office. We learned a lot from how close it was to success—and the curious ways that it failed—about the plausible, strange, not-too-distant future in which AI models might autonomously run things in the real economy. The shopkeeper (who we named Claudius) had to source products, set prices, manage inventory, and deal with customers. Things got really, really weird. Read more about the experiment: https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2 0:00 Background on Project Vend 0:35 How a transaction works 1:27 Claudius's naïveté 2:29 An identity crisis 3:57 The CEO agent 5:04 Conclusion

Dec 18, 20256mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: December 18, 2025
Duration: 6m
Channel: Anthropic
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

For a large part of 2025, we ran Project Vend: an experiment where we let Claude manage a small business in the Anthropic office. We learned a lot from how close it was to success—and the curious ways that it failed—about the plausible, strange, not-too-distant future in which AI models might autonomously run things in the real economy. The shopkeeper (who we named Claudius) had to source products, set prices, manage inventory, and deal with customers. Things got really, really weird. Read more about the experiment: https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2 0:00 Background on Project Vend 0:35 How a transaction works 1:27 Claudius's naïveté 2:29 An identity crisis 3:57 The CEO agent 5:04 Conclusion

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Anthropic, Claude ran a business in our office explores claude ran an office vending business, revealing agent pitfalls and fixes Project Vend put Claude in charge of a real office vending operation to test long-horizon autonomy, not just isolated business tasks.

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