New Venture Creation: Impact of Virtual Firms and Autonomous Agents on Transaction Costs

Technological advances can create new opportunities and constraints for firms' organizational forms. The rapid advancement in the development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the prospect of developing AI agents that can learn and act autonomously may create conditions that radically redefine firm organization and the firm's boundaries. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has already predicted that it is only a matter of time before a founder utilizes technologies such as AI and AI agents to create the first “one-person billion-dollar company” (Sawers, 2025). Firms have used chatbots based on expert systems and generative AI for years and have now begun using AI agents to complete complex tasks that include learning and reasoning (Mayer et al, 2025). AI has been shown to augment creativity and aid in task completion (Jia, et al., 2024). The exponential rate of change in AI technology, coupled with innovations in organizational design and employment arrangements, has created new opportunities to think about new approaches to organizing and new organizational forms. The potential shift from human-centric to AI agent organizational forms recasts the reasoning and boundaries of firms.