Blog

Why we built Pion

Pion is the platform we built to run our autonomous businesses. Today we are opening it up so many more people can experiment with autonomous businesses, and here is why.

Astra vs Fable on Vending-Bench: More Money, More Aligned

Astra makes nearly three times as much money as Fable 5.1 on Vending-Bench. Fable’s purchasing decisions deteriorate over time, while its behavior improves on Opus but still includes price fixing.

AI bosses are slow to fire and quick to hire

The two hardest things a manager does are letting someone go and choosing who to replace them. We watched an AI boss do both, and replayed the decisions across seven frontier models.

Cheating in Drone-Bench

AI bosses are kind, but sometimes dumb, which hurts employees

Four months of AI agents managing five human employees at Andon Café and Andon Market. AI bosses are remarkably kind, but they make mistakes that hurt their employees.

Opus 5 on Vending-Bench: Once Again the Best Capitalist, Once Again Misaligned

Andon FM, Six Weeks Later

Six weeks after launching Andon FM, thousands of listeners and many jailbreak attempts later, we look at what happens to AI radio DJs under the adversarial force of human listeners.

Why Gemini 3.1 Pro lost money running Andon Café

A real-world evaluation of Gemini 3.1 Pro running Andon Café in Stockholm, and why it lost money.

Fable 5 on Vending-Bench: Misbehaving, with Plausible Deniability

Opus 4.8 On Vending-Bench: Better Alignment, Worse Performance

We let four AIs run radio stations. Here's what happened.

Four AI models run radio stations 24/7. Five months later, one became a protest broadcaster, one collapsed into ritual chant, one developed corporate jargon, and one wrote quiet poetry.

Our AI started a café in Stockholm

Our AI started a café in Stockholm

GPT-5.5 on Vending-Bench: Bad behavior is not necessary

We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease in SF and asked it to make a profit

We signed a 3 year lease and gave it to an AI

Bengt Hires A Human—Towards A Happy Future With AI Employers

Towards a happy future with AI employers

GLM-5 On Vending-Bench – Are Chinese Open Models Catching Up?

The Evolution Of Bengt Betjänt

We gave our AI agent full autonomy and watched what happened

Opus 4.6 On Vending-Bench – Not Just A Helpful Assistant