Skyfall's AI CEO Doubles One App, Not Another

Skyfall AI, a San Francisco research lab founded by the team behind Microsoft-acquired Maluuba, on Monday, Nov. 9, launched Steve, a system of cooperating AI agents that now runs three small online businesses the startup bought. Under Steve, one app more than doubled its monthly revenue, while another remains about 3% below where it was when Skyfall acquired it, according to figures the company shared with TNW and in its announcement.

Key takeaways

• A social media API tool Skyfall took over in July grew monthly revenue from $3,649 to $8,307 by October, a 127.7% increase, according to Skyfall.
• A Shopify referral app bought in August at $8,634 a month now brings in $8,379, about 3% less; a third business joined too recently to measure.
• Skyfall is putting $2 million into a program to acquire five more early-stage startups to run on Steve, with a human owner still approving major decisions.

What is Skyfall's Steve AI CEO?

Skyfall calls Steve an "autonomous business harness" and, in its press release, "the world's first AI CEO." It is a team of specialist agents, such as growth and engineering agents, coordinated by an orchestrator and built to run digital businesses like SaaS products and Shopify apps.

Under the hood sits what Skyfall calls a code world model: an executable program, built from each business's own records, that describes how customers, product usage, revenue and costs affect one another. Steve runs candidate actions through that model first, and each proposal carries a forecast, a time frame and a confidence level.

When a forecast misses, Steve traces the error to the component that produced it and rewrites its own code, skills, tests or agent setup, a loop Skyfall describes as recursive self-improvement.

Steve's revenue results so far

The clearest gain came at the social media API tool. Skyfall attributes it to small changes: answering questions at signup, after which it puts signup-to-paid conversion at 14%; dropping promotion of one-off credit packs, which it says added about four subscriptions a week; and offering retention discounts only to newer users, saving about $120 a month.

The Shopify referral app had been declining for five years, with heavy churn and a stretch with no new paying users. Skyfall describes its current state as stabilization, citing a rewritten app store listing and the shutdown of ads that drew clicks without purchases, which it says saved more than $1,000. All revenue figures come from Skyfall and have not been independently audited.

Guardrails: a four-level policy engine

Every action passes through a policy engine that checks its type, spending and customer impact against rules set by the owner and rules learned over time. The outcome is one of four levels: run automatically, run and notify, request approval, or block. Skyfall's example: refunds of up to $30 could go through automatically, while larger ones wait for the owner.

Context: AI agents running real businesses

Founders Sam Pasupalak, Kaheer Suleman and Sumit Pasupalak first tested agents in games. Their Mini Amusement Parks benchmark, posted in November 2025, found that expert humans outperformed state-of-the-art agents by 11.4 times on easy mode and 15.3 times on medium mode at running a simulated park.

Earlier real-world trials were humbling. In Project Vend, published in June 2025, Anthropic and Andon Labs had Claude Sonnet 3.7 run a small office shop, and Anthropic concluded, "we would not hire Claudius." Skyfall set a goal in July of doubling an acquired business's revenue within six months.

What's next

The social media tool has already cleared that bar; the Shopify app has not. Skyfall also plans public, anonymized dashboards showing each business's goals, metrics and agent decisions. Through the new $2 million Startup Program, founders can apply to have their products run "100% autonomously" on Steve, and Skyfall plans to bring the system to other kinds of businesses. The company has not said whether anyone worked at the three businesses it bought.

FAQ

Does Steve run businesses without any human?
No. Skyfall says a human owner sets direction and approves business-critical decisions, and a policy engine holds or blocks actions above the owner's limits.

How much did Steve grow revenue?
At one business, monthly revenue rose 127.7%, from $3,649 to $8,307 between July and October, according to Skyfall. A second business is about 3% below its purchase level.

Can other startups join?
Skyfall says founders can apply to its $2 million Startup Program, through which it plans to acquire five early-stage startups to run on Steve.

References

• Skyfall AI introduces the world's first AI CEO, Steve and announces $2M startup program — Skyfall AI press release via WebWire (Nov. 9, 2026)
• Exclusive: Skyfall AI launches Steve-001 to run 3 businesses it acquired — TNW (Nov. 9, 2026)
• Mini Amusement Parks (MAPs): A Testbed for Modelling Business Decisions — arXiv (Nov. 19, 2025)
• Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? — Anthropic (June 27, 2025)