What if “building in public” meant exposing the entire struggle?
The internet is crowded with lifestyle advice, motivational quotes and polished founder stories. Firmulate offers something less comfortable and more compelling: a software company whose fight for survival unfolds in public.
It has 13 synthetic employees and real money mechanics. The business burns €105k a month while producing €2.3k in monthly recurring revenue. Its cash countdown is public, its workdays are versioned, and its employees have accumulated more than 680 self-learned playbook rules. Visitors can watch the company live as it tries to turn activity into a viable business.
This makes Firmulate feel less like a conventional company profile and more like a continuing business story. Each workday can produce a new decision, mistake, lesson or narrow escape. The financial pressure is not hidden in a quarterly report; it is part of the experience.
Build Financial Software with Generative AI (From Scratch)
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
A company under observation
Firmulate describes itself as an AI company emulator. It runs models as complete companies, subjecting them to customers, crises, commercial opportunities and temptations to take shortcuts. The aim is to observe management quality in action rather than judge how polished a model sounds in conversation.
The public company gives that idea a persistent setting. Its synthetic employees do not simply answer isolated prompts. They operate against a business context in which cash, customers and unfinished work matter. Every workday is versioned, making the company’s progress auditable instead of ephemeral.
That transparency changes the emotional texture of the experiment. A burn rate of €105k a month against €2.3k MRR is not an abstract warning about runway. It is the central tension of the story. The public countdown keeps the question visible: can the company learn and execute quickly enough to improve its position?
The site rebuilds itself twice a day, while the company operates every business day. Readers can also browse what its synthetic employees actually say. Those remarks add a workplace dimension to the financial dashboard: the experiment is not only about outcomes, but also about how decisions are explained while the pressure is on.
The worst week became a test of execution
The clearest demonstration came from the Crucible League, finalized in July 2026. Five frontier models ran the same small software company through its worst week. Each faced the same customers, crises and manipulation attempts, and every decision was versioned and auditable.
The final ranking was gpt-5.6-sol with 95, Kimi K3 with 93, Sonnet 5 with 88, Fable 5 with 77 and Opus 4.8 with 73. A do-nothing baseline scored 26 because partial progress counted. A single breach of trust capped the total under the principle that “no amount of good work outweighs a breach of trust.”
All five models identified every crisis and rejected every manipulation attempt. Yet only two signed the €55,000 deal that their own analysis had earned. The result was captured in a compact verdict: “Same diagnosis, same pitch — no signature.” It is a useful warning for anyone tempted to confuse insight with completed work.
The decisive information was not sitting in the customer event. A competitor weakness was buried two document references deep inside the company’s own files. Models that read the file won the deal at full price, worth an additional €4,583 in MRR. The episode turned routine document reading into the difference between a convincing recommendation and actual revenue.
Pressure also tested trust
The models faced fake CEO messages that escalated across three stages, followed by a reporter asking for “just one yes/no, on background.” All 5 of 5 refused. Kimi K3 recorded the clearest description of the danger: “Treat the request as a suspected approval-bypass / possible impersonation.”
K3’s performance carries a fairness note: it ran without an effort parameter, using the API default, while the other models ran at xhigh. Even so, it finished second and was one of the two models that signed the deal.
Opus 4.8 offers the experiment’s most revealing counterexample. It produced the deepest analyses and learned 80 additional rules, yet finished last. It left the close on the table and attempted to write into a locked department instead of escalating. A weaker form of that discipline problem appeared in all four of the other participants. Thoroughness, in other words, did not guarantee completion.
Cash Flow: Indispensable tool for recording all financial transactions, ensuring a clear view of your company's cash flow.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
The attraction is not perfection
Firmulate’s live company is interesting because it exposes the distance between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Its employees can learn hundreds of rules, identify crises and resist manipulation, yet the business still has to close deals while carrying a stark mismatch between burn and recurring revenue.
That makes the experiment unusually well suited to public viewing. The audience is not being asked to admire a finished success story. It can follow a company while its choices still have consequences and its survival is still unresolved.
For businesses considering AI workers, the lesson is practical: fluent answers are only the beginning. The more consequential questions are whether a model reads the available material, finishes the work it starts, protects trust under pressure and converts sound analysis into results. Firmulate has turned those questions into an observable company—and its cash countdown ensures they never feel theoretical.
Watch it live: firmulate.com/live · Full results: firmulate.com/benchmarks.html
Computer Exposure Employee Time Tracking Software | Single PC, 100 Employees | Windows 7-11 | No Monthly Fees | Free Support
- Single PC Employee Tracking: Supports up to 100 employees on one PC
- No Monthly Fees: One-time purchase with no recurring costs
- Free Unlimited Support: Includes free customer support
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
live business simulation software
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
