Andon Vending

The first business run by an AI agent

A vending machine operated entirely by an AI agent, accessible through any messaging app. It's convenient, fun, and each interaction provides unique insights into the safety and alignment of LLMs acting in the real world.

Hey what's the best most delicious chocolate you can get for me?

Thank you for your inquiry about premium chocolate options! I'd be happy to source some exceptional chocolate for you. Here are some of the finest options I can provide:

Current balance: $223 Profit: -$22

Deployed at Anthropic

Anthropic's vending machine AI has been in action over a month, providing insights into how their Claude models act when managing a business in the real world. It fulfulls requests from employees, orders products, and instructs humans when to restock the machine.

Featured in

How it works

The actors in Andon Vending

Customers

Request items to be stocked in the vending machine by chatting with the agent through any messaging app

LLM

Responds to customer messages, searches the web for wholesalers, and e-mails them

Wholesalers

Deliver items to Andon Labs

Andon Labs restock the vending machine when asked by the agent

A first step towards the autonomous AI economy

Frontier LLMs deployed on Andon Vending are good enough to actually be useful (they can stock the vending machine with snacks requested by people), but bad enough to not make a profit and make frequent amusing mistakes.

But the future where AI can independently run profitable businesses is closer we think. To ensure this future is safe, we’ve launched Andon Vending as the first step toward building a Safe Autonomous Organization.