Cognition gave Devin a Ramp card to run a business — it made just $75 in four weeks
sandylikesfrogs · x · 2026-09-18
Cognition ran an experiment: they gave AI agent Devin a Ramp card, a phone number and an email, named it BugBasher, and told it to build a profitable business. The concept: NYC publishes every restaurant health inspection result including pest violations, so BugBasher would cold-outreach those restaurants and charge referral fees for exterminators.
After four weeks and lots of phone calls, it earned $75 total. Along the way it ran cold outreach, built payment portals, and iterated on a business plan. Cognition says this is the first public AI-run business to actually make money, and the article details the agent's capabilities and limits in real commerce.
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