Project Vend, automated store, Anthropic Inc., San Francisco, California, USA

[Administrator]

Developer - Anthropic Inc.

Contributor - Andon Labs

anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2

anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1

andonlabs.com/vending

andonlabs.com/evals/vending-bench-2

 

[Administrator]

Article "Can AI run a physical shop? Anthropic’s Claude tried and the results were gloriously, hilariously bad"

by Michael Nuñez
June 27, 2025

 

[Administrator]

Claude ran a business in our office

Dec 18, 2025

For a large part of 2025, we ran Project Vend: an experiment where we let Claude manage a small business in the Anthropic office. We learned a lot from how close it was to success—and the curious ways that it failed—about the plausible, strange, not-too-distant future in which AI models might autonomously run things in the real economy.

The shopkeeper (who we named Claudius) had to source products, set prices, manage inventory, and deal with customers. Things got really, really weird.
0:00 Background on Project Vend
0:35 How a transaction works
1:27 Claudius's naïveté
2:29 An identity crisis
3:57 The CEO agent
5:04 Conclusion

 

[Administrator]

Article "We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars."
Anthropic’s Claude ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI agents.

by Joanna Stern
December 18, 2025

 

[Administrator]

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

Apr 11, 2026

At Andon Labs, we have been deploying AI agents into the real world, giving them real tools and real money and documenting the consequences. You may know us as the creators of Claudius, the AI running a vending machine at Anthropic’s office. But frontier models have become really good, and running vending machines is too easy for them now. Thus, we decided to make it harder. We signed a 3 year lease for retail space in San Francisco (at 2102 Union St in Cow Hollow) and gave it to an AI to do whatever it wanted with it.
The store is named Andon Market and the AI’s name is Luna. But entering the store, you might ask “what is so AI about it? There are human employees here”. Yes, they are here because Luna knew that she needed them, so she posted job listings, held phone interviews and in the end made a hiring decision. Everything else you see, from the item selection, to the prices, to the opening hours, to the mural on the wall, was decided by Luna. She has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras.

 

[Administrator]

Article "An AI built a boutique with $100,000, then panicked when no one showed up to work"

by Lloyd Lee
April 12, 2026