Forget AI coding agents. One startup is now working on an AI CEO that it hopes could automate an entire business from end to end.
Skyfall AI came out of stealth this week after spending the past year developing AI systems that are designed to make the long-term decisions typically handled by company executives.
Now, the startup wants to put its technology to the test in the real world by buying a small SaaS or e-commerce business for up to $1 million and letting its AI run much of the company.
“Skyfall builds AI agents that can run a company on their own, and we’re proving it by buying software businesses to operate ourselves,” the company’s website reads. “If you’ve built a real product with paying customers and you’re ready to hand it off, we want to hear from you.”
Forbes reports that the AI would oversee areas including pricing, marketing, customer support, finance and operations as it gradually reduces human involvement. The overall goal is to double the acquired company’s revenue in just six months.
Skyfall was founded by Sam Pasupalak, Kaheer Suleman, and Sumit Pasupalak. Sam Pasupalak and Suleman previously co-founded the deep learning startup Maluuba, which Microsoft acquired in 2017.
With Skyfall, the founders are now trying to move beyond limitations they see in large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
“For the last 5 years, the foundational model market has relied on a single paradigm: scaling laws for LLMs – more data, more compute, bigger models,” Sam Pasupalak wrote in a post on X. “However, the real world is messy and much more complicated. In order to achieve our long term vision, the next generation of AI models requires a different approach.”
To help test that theory, the company has developed a benchmark designed to measure how AI models adapt as business conditions change. According to Skyfall’s research, current models performed well with simple tasks but struggled on more difficult ones where decisions had long-term consequences.
Skyfall’s proposed solution is what it calls “enterprise world models,” AI systems that emphasize continual learning and world modelling.
But before taking over an actual business, the company tested its tech on a video game.
“Last year we started with the video game RollerCoaster Tycoon,” Sam Pasupalak told Forbes. “Where you’re essentially operating an entire theme park and trying to maximize revenue. The AI’s success on it gave us confidence that we could operate inside a simulated business. The next step is buying a real-world company. After that, perhaps next year, we’ll look at automating businesses worth tens of millions of dollars.”
Other companies have conducted smaller experiments involving AI-run businesses. Anthropic previously allowed its Claude model to run a vending machine, while researchers at Andon Labs put AI in charge of a coffee shop in Stockholm. Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly developing an AI agent to help him work faster.
But none have gone as far as Skyfall.
Ultimately, the startup’s founders have pretty ambitious (and downright naive) dreams for their tech.
Sam Pasupalak wrote on X that he and his team believe in a utopian future in which people are free to pursue their creative interests instead of spending their lives on mundane tasks. He argues that reaching that future will require automating the way companies operate.
“We want to free humanity from all the monotonous boring operational tasks that they spend their daily lives doing,” wrote Pasupalak.
