The Automated Empire: How Naïve is Using AI to Build Companies from Scratch

The dream of starting a business has always been tangled in a web of tedious administrative tasks. From incorporating an LLC to setting up email accounts and payment processors, the foundational work can be a significant barrier. Now, a startup called Naïve is betting that artificial intelligence can handle nearly all of it, and investors are backing that vision with $28.5 million.

From Vibe Coding to Vibe Incorporating

The company, which recently closed a Series A funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners, offers an infrastructure platform that allows AI agents to automate the bulk of the work involved in setting up and running a business. This represents a natural evolution of the “vibe coding” trend, where developers use AI to generate code. Naïve takes this a step further by enabling AI to manage the entire operational lifecycle of a company.

The appeal is evident. Within months of its launch, Naïve has signed up over 30,000 developer customers. The platform packages the complex process of assembling payments, email accounts, phone numbers, cloud infrastructure, storage, and company incorporation behind a single, accessible API.

How the Automation Works

The process is designed to be remarkably straightforward. A developer provides a prompt to tools like Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex, which then connect to Naïve’s API to provision the necessary infrastructure. The AI can orchestrate the formation of a U.S. LLC, requiring only the user’s input to complete mandatory “know your customer” (KYC) processes and make required payments.

From that point, the AI agents can handle the rest. This includes setting up email inboxes, virtual cards, phone numbers, databases, and computing resources, as well as connecting to essential services like Stripe for payments and QuickBooks for accounting. A built in governance layer allows users to set budgets, restrict their agents’ capabilities, and require human approval before sensitive actions are executed.

The Rise of Autonomous Businesses

The types of businesses being run on this platform are as varied as they are futuristic. CEO and co-founder Sean Dorje told TechCrunch that customers are using Naïve to operate “face less” online content channels on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, AI automation agencies, and even a fully autonomous rental car agency. One particularly striking example was a TikTok channel that posted AI generated videos of cats and dogs dancing and boxing.

The fastest growing segment, according to Dorje, is AI automation agencies. These are businesses that essentially sell AI agents to other small businesses, creating a new ecosystem of AI driven enterprise.

The Challenge of Inference Costs

While the concept is compelling, the financial reality of running a business with AI agents presents a significant challenge. The cost of keeping these agents running can escalate rapidly as they call expensive AI models, pass large amounts of context between tasks, and consume resources even when idle. This “inference cost” is a critical hurdle that Naïve is actively addressing.

A substantial portion of the new funding will be used to develop infrastructure to make these agent loops more efficient. The company is building several key projects:

• A model router that sends queries to the most efficient model for a specific task, preserving and reusing previously reasoned data to save on processing costs.

• A memory system that stores and surfaces business context as needed, allowing agents to work more effectively without constantly reprocessing information.

• An orchestrator for dividing work among agents to optimize parallel processing.

• A serverless runtime that runs agents within lightweight JavaScript environments rather than assigning each one a complete virtual machine. This approach lets customers pay primarily when an agent is active, making it far less expensive to deploy large numbers of agents.

Beyond the Startup World

While the autonomous company toolkit is currently the most popular offering, Dorje noted that optimizing inference costs is becoming the fastest growing source of demand. This has attracted interest from larger enterprises that may not need help incorporating a business but are deeply concerned about the recurring cost of operating a horde of AI agents.

This enterprise angle could prove to be even more valuable than the initial incorporation service. Developers may first use Naïve to deal with the tedium of setting up a company, but as they grow, the platform’s ability to meaningfully reduce operational costs becomes the primary value proposition.

A Lean Team with Big Ambitions

Despite its rapid growth and significant funding, Naïve maintains a lean operation with only 10 full time employees. The new capital will be used to hire researchers and expand its development team to focus on the four infrastructure projects designed to make agent driven businesses more efficient and cost effective.

The Series A round included participation from Y Combinator, Zetta, Liquid 2, and prominent angel investors such as Gokul Rajaram, co-founder Tim Zheng, and former HubSpot COO JD Sherman. This brings the company’s total capital raised to approximately $32 million.

As the line between human and machine labor continues to blur, Naïve is positioning itself at the forefront of a new paradigm: the automated enterprise. Whether this leads to a golden age of entrepreneurship or a chaotic landscape of AI driven competition remains to be seen, but the journey promises to be fascinating.

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