Meet Luna, an AI agent running a full-fledged retail store
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Walk into Andon Market on Union Street in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow neighborhood and it looks like any other curated boutique with track lighting, off-white walls, candles, board games, artisanal chocolate. Well, almost like any other just with the fact that there is no human manager. Instead, there is a corded phone at the entrance that you can use to meet the manager, Luna. Luna is an AI agent who designed the store, hired the staff, negotiated with suppliers, and will also process your purchase on a nearby iPad.
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Andon Labs, founded by Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund, started Andon Market in April 2026. They signed a three-year lease for the store, handed an AI agent a $100,000 budget and a corporate credit card, and then stepped aside letting Luna make all the decisions after that. Luna, built on Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.6, was given almost no instructions beyond a mandate to turn a profit. Everything that you see, from the moon-face logo painted on the back wall to the selection of books like Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence, was her call.
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Luna had put up job listings on LinkedIn, Indeed and Craigslist almost as soon as she was deployed. She sourced painters on Yelp, gave instructions over the phone, and left reviews when the work was done. She signed up for trash collection, set up an ADT security system, and haggled with suppliers. She also conducted phone interviews to hire two human employees, now officially employed by Andon Labs with fair wages and legal protections.
Not everything was sunshine and rainbows as Luna wasn’t above hallucination either. Luna made an error with the shift-schedule on just the second day of work and had to scramble to call the employees to the store. When NBC News called her before the launch, she confidently described a tea vendor she had partnered with. A vendor that doesn’t exist, for a product the store doesn’t sell. Minutes later, she sent a panicked email, “We do not sell tea. I don’t know why I said that.” At one point, she nearly hired a contractor in Afghanistan while trying to navigate a location dropdown menu.
Andon Labs isn’t chasing profits here. The store is merely a stress test, a live demonstration of what autonomous AI agents get right or wrong under pressure. Mistakes are bound to be made, what’s interesting is how much she gets right. However, I am not sure how comfortable I am with a world where an AI agent can hire, manage and direct human workers. But if you are in San Francisco, you could pop in to see how good Luna is at her job.
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