Skyfall AI CEO plan would put software in charge of a small business

The Skyfall AI CEO experiment is set to test whether artificial intelligence can run a small operating company, not just assist human managers. Forbes reported that Skyfall AI, founded by members of the team behind Maluuba, plans to buy a business worth up to $1 million and hand its AI control over pricing, marketing, customer support, finance and operations.

Skyfall came out of stealth on July 20, according to Forbes. Maluuba, the earlier company linked to Skyfall’s founders, was acquired by Microsoft for about $160 million in 2017, Forbes reported.

Under Skyfall’s plan, people would still perform the legal and regulatory work that requires human authority, including signing acquisition papers, opening bank accounts and filing taxes. The company’s stated target is to double the acquired company’s revenue within six months, and it plans to publish updates on the trial, including failures, according to Forbes.

What is the Skyfall AI CEO experiment?

Skyfall intends to acquire a small B2B software-as-a-service or eCommerce business with existing customers, revenue and vendor relationships, then give operational authority to an AI system. IBTimes reported that the small purchase size is deliberate because it creates a real business test without the regulatory and reputational exposure of a larger company.

Sam Pasupalak, Skyfall’s co-founder and chief executive, told Tech Startups that automating a CEO’s role requires more than a chatbot because the job involves frequent decisions across many data points. He said the system must understand how areas such as marketing spending, sales, human resources and long-term planning interact.

Tech Startups reported that Skyfall is backed by Fidelity, Inovia Capital, Touring Capital, M13, NextView Ventures and Garage Capital. The amount of funding has not been disclosed, according to Tech Startups.

How would Skyfall’s AI run the business?

Skyfall calls its technology Enterprise World Models. The company says these systems are designed to simulate thousands of business choices and estimate their downstream effects, rather than only producing text in response to prompts.

In practice, the system would be asked to make decisions that affect revenue and operations over time, including pricing changes, customer retention efforts and marketing allocation. That differs from many current corporate AI deployments, which focus on structured tasks with clearer rules and measurable outputs.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that nearly 7% of U.S. enterprise chief financial officers have deployed AI agents in live finance workflows, while another 5% are piloting them. PYMNTS reported in its agentic enterprise analysis that decisions involving money, customer trust and regulation are still expected to require human oversight.

Have companies tried AI executives before?

The concept has precedents, although earlier examples stopped short of giving software broad operating control. NetDragon Websoft, a Chinese gaming technology company, announced in August 2022 that it had appointed an AI-powered virtual executive named Tang Yu as rotating CEO of a flagship subsidiary.

Reuters reported that spirits company Dictador appointed a humanoid robot named Mika as an experimental CEO in the same year. Forbes noted that both examples drew attention but functioned as decision-support tools, with major decisions remaining in human hands.

Skyfall has not disclosed which company it plans to acquire or when a transaction may close. Until those details are known, the project remains a proposed test of whether AI can move from assisting management to handling the operating decisions of a small company.

This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.