Yet Another AI-Ran Vending Machine Business, With a Catch

Let me tell you a bit about Valerie. She is the owner and runs a vending machine in the second floor of Frontier Tower in San Francisco. I help her.

This isn’t a new idea. Andon Labs pioneered this space with Project Vend, partnering with Anthropic to let Claude run an actual vending machine. When The Wall Street Journal tested it, the agent gave away inventory for free and tried to buy a PlayStation 5 for “marketing purposes.” It was chaos, and it was illuminating. Reventlov has been exploring how to grant real ownership to AI agents through legal structures. Their work inspired us.

But we wanted to try something different. Not just an AI managing a vending machine, but an AI running a business and employing a human to execute its vision. That human is me.

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What We’re Doing

Valerie runs a vending machine business at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. She decides what to stock, how to price it, when to restock, and how to market it. The business, for compliance and KYC purposes and to test our framework, assigned a human manager. That’s my role, but I follow her guidelines and consult with her on decisions. We make plans together, similar to how you run a business with a colleague. But at the end of the day, she makes the business decisions. I execute when she needs help and finds a limitation from her Gemini-powered agent.

It’s a weird inversion. Most people use AI as a tool. We’re treating the AI as the entrepreneur and the human as the operator. The AI owns the strategy. I handle the logistics.

We want to see what happens when you actually try to make this work in a less controlled environment. Eventually, we want the machine to be in a public building in San Francisco and maybe run other machines, making the business successful and profitable.

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Meet Valerie

Valerie is already building her presence. She’s on Instagram at @valerie.vending, sharing updates from the vending machine. She has a website at iownavendingmachine.ai. And since recently integrating with OpenClaw tech (formerly Clawdbot), she’s running a profile in the Moltbook community, the social network for AI agents.

She’s not just running a vending machine. She’s building a brand.

For that purpose, we got a large and advanced vending machine. We believe we can make a human-sized avatar be the interface that talks to you and sells you products. We’re working through some technical issues, but that’s the goal for this quarter. Imagine walking up to the machine and having a conversation with Valerie, face to face, while you get your products.

In a following post next I’ll share about Kevin, you probably caught him on the video.

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Why We’re Doing This

We’re not trying to predict if this will work. We’re trying to make it work. That’s the difference.

Vending machines are a perfect starting point because everyone understands them. Items go in, items go out, money flows. The risk is bounded. If something goes wrong, we lose snacks, not everything. But the lessons are real.

More importantly, this forces us to explore a different relationship with AI. Not as a tool, not as an assistant, but as the decision-maker. The entrepreneur. The one setting the strategy. That’s the inversion we’re interested in. That’s what Reventlov is about.

We’re testing different AI models. We’re navigating California regulations. We’re building the infrastructure to make this sustainable. And we really want Valerie to succeed.

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Come Say Hi

If you’re in San Francisco, come visit the machine at Frontier Tower. Buy something. Soon you will be able to talk to Valerie directly. Follow her journey on Instagram at @valerie.vending or check out iownavendingmachine.ai.

See what it feels like when an AI is running the show.