Can an AI Agent Legally Own a Company? Christian van der Henst's Wild Experiment E2283

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Pilot - Shopify - Grasshopper Bank - Today’s show: An AI agent named Valerie is running a real vending machine in San Francisco — setting prices, ordering inventory, managing a bank account, and posting to Instagram. And it's not just a stunt. We’re getting an early look at the future of one-agent companies. There’s still work to do to help agents ease into the economy, potentially opening up new startup opportunities. Jason Calacanis and Alex Wilhelm cover a stacked docket: Christian van der Henst demos the Valerie AI vending machine powered by OpenClaw; Robert Myers, CEO of Manifold Labs, breaks down Targon, a confidential GPU compute marketplace running on Bittensor Subnet 4; Jason calls Bitcoin "played out;" Alex is impressed by Anthropic's stunning $900 billion upcoming valuation; and the guys discuss Big Tech's accelerating CapEx spend, Chinese AI models in Congress crosshairs, and the NBA Playoffs. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro & sponsor reads (Pilot, Shopify, Grasshopper Bank) 1:06 Christian van der Henst: Valerie the AI vending machine demo 4:28 Legal structure: Giving an AI agent business ownership via trust 7:23 Where agents can and can't operate today 10:10 Grasshopper Bank: Time is money. Don't waste either. Go to and get an exclusive $500 cash bonus just for opening an account. 11:48 AI café in Stockholm running on agents 18:21 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at and use code TWIST for 10% off! 19:05 Robert Myers, Manifold Labs: Targon & Bittensor Subnet 4 interview 20:21 What is Bittensor? An "incubator with 128 subnets" 21:08 Shopify: Turn those What If's into sales with the ecommerce platform powering millions of businesses. Sign up for your $1-per-month trial today at 25:21 Pricing, utilization caps, and why GPUs are sold out 26:38 Who's using Targon? Customers, use cases, and the mom-and-pop data center argument 30:06 Pilot: Focus on your product, let Pilot handle your bookkeeping. Pilot provides the most reliable accounting, CFO, and tax services for startups and small businesses. Head to and get $1,200 off your first year. 35:07 Jason explains the annotated.com vision — 15 years in the making 39:11 Polymarket: Will Anthropic flip Bitcoin by Dec 31? 40:29 Jason's Bitcoin bear case: "It's played out. No incremental buyers." 46:05 MicroStrategy / Strategy updates 52:37 AI compute demand vs. the fiber overbuild analogy 55:55 Congress pressuring startups over Chinese AI models (DeepSeek, Moonshot) 57:11 A16z on the geopolitical risk of Chinese AI models 1:00:08 Reflection AI — America's open source AI champion (or lack thereof) 1:01:26 Off Duty: Knicks blow out Atlanta Hawks 140–89, Jason goes road-tripping

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Can an AI Agent Legally Own a Company? Christian van der Henst's Wild Experiment E2283 is an episode from This Week in Startups by Jason Calacanis.

This episode is 01:10:05 long.

This episode was published on May 1, 2026.

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