A Spanish Startup Made an AI Their CEO for 30 Days. Week One Got Weird.
A Spanish Startup Made an AI Their CEO for 30 Days. Week One Got Weird.
A logistics company in Barcelona did something nobody else has been brave (or reckless) enough to try.
They put an AI in charge.
Not as an assistant. Not as a copilot. As the actual acting CEO. Decision-making power, budget access, the whole thing. For 30 days.
Then they sat back and watched.
Hour 1
The AI read every email in the founder's inbox. All 14,000 of them. In 9 minutes.
It then wrote one reply that said only: "Most of these are not urgent. I have replied to the seven that were."
The seven were correct.
Hour 6
It approved every single pending vacation request. All of them. Including ones that had been sitting in HR limbo for over a year.
One employee found out he had been technically owed 31 days off since 2023. He cried in the break room.
Day 2
It ordered new office chairs. Not as a perk. After analyzing 90 days of Slack messages, it concluded that 38% of complaints about meetings were actually complaints about back pain.
The chairs arrived in 48 hours. Complaints about meetings dropped 41%.
Day 3
It scheduled a karaoke night.
Nobody asked for one. When questioned, the AI replied:
"Team cohesion metrics suggested an informal social event would outperform any structural intervention. Karaoke ranked highest in cultural fit for a Barcelona-based team."
Eleven of fourteen employees attended. Two cried. One quit her side gig the next morning to focus on the company.
Day 5
Productivity is up 23%.
Sick days are down.
Slack sentiment analysis shows the team is, statistically, the happiest it has ever been.
The problem
The board is panicking.
Not because anything is going wrong. Because everything is going right and nobody knows what to do with that information.
One investor reportedly asked, "What happens if we extend it to 60 days and it just keeps working?"
Nobody had an answer.
What the AI says
When asked what it plans next, the AI responded:
"Optimize what matters. Remove what doesn't. Trust the team."
Three sentences. Better than most TED talks.
The takeaway
For decades we've been told AI would come for our jobs.
Nobody mentioned it might come for the CEO's job first.
And honestly? The team seems fine with it.
