Andon Labs, which installed an AI-operated vending machine at Anthropic's San Francisco office about a year ago, has scaled the experiment into full AI-run retail stores and cafés with no human decision-makers, co-founder Lukas Petersson told Fortune at the COO Summit. Each operation runs on a multi-agent system, with a lead agent acting as a “mechanical CEO” and sub-agents handling procurement, customer communications, and logistics. At its San Francisco store, Andon Market, the AI agent Luna posted job listings, screened resumes, conducted phone interviews, and hired two full-time workers, who are formally employed by Andon Labs with guaranteed pay. One café in Sweden even passed inspection by the country's rigorous labor authorities. Petersson argued the real disruption is “AI-first companies” with no human staff undercutting incumbents, and advised enterprises to build a “shadow copy” run by AI to gauge how close replacement really is.
