self-driving company

What it means

a company in which people set goals, exercise judgment, and remain accountable while AI agents independently carry out many of the operational steps needed to reach those goals

Where it comes from

Replit co-founder Amjad Masad and Scott Kennedy used self-driving company as the title and central concept of a July 2026 essay describing an organization in which people choose the destination while agents perform an increasing share of the steps. The phrase gained broader attention after Masad discussed it at TechCrunch Disrupt in October 2026.

In a sentence

In the self-driving company, an agent investigates each support ticket before a person decides how the difficult cases should be handled.

The startup did not call itself a self-driving company until its agents could perform work across engineering, sales, and customer support rather than merely draft text.

Good to know

A self-driving company is not necessarily a company without employees. The phrase emphasizes delegated execution with human direction, judgment, escalation, and responsibility. It therefore differs from zero-human company, which imagines daily operations with little or no human participation. Claims about productivity in early examples are generally company-reported and should not be treated as independent proof that the model works everywhere.