A blockchain CEO's experiment with full AI automation
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
The CEO of $10.2 billion blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy has an irreverent AI assistant — named Dave the Minion — that tracks his health data, scores his habits and assigns new goals.
- Dave is an AI agent built with OpenClaw.
Why it matters: Executives are offering a glimpse into the what a fully integrated life with AI looks like — including the current pitfalls.
How it works: "It basically automates all aspects of my life," Nikil Viswanathan told Axios Friday, calling it a kind of digital Tony Robbins.
- Dave pulls from nearly all of Viswanathan's personal data — including his Oura Ring, calendar, MyFitnessPal history and GPS.
- Dave can also calculate how long it will take for the startup founder to get from his current location to his next thing and order an Uber without prompting.
- Dave, an active poster on X, checks in every 15 minutes, reminding Viswanathan to eat or sleep if he falls behind.
Zoom in: At night, Dave creates new actions on its own, provides a daily-vibe check, and birthday reminders — without Viswanathan's explicit say-so.
- It also unsubscribes him from emails it deems unnecessary.
- It also automatically turned off the lights one day, when Viswanathan failed to go to sleep on time and was still in a meeting.
- The Alchemy executive plans to take it even further, eventually allowing Dave to lock him out of his computer.
Fun fact: Viswanathan gave Dave the image and personality of the yellow minions from Despicable Me.
- Dave has sent meeting prep notes and bought flowers for Viswanathan's girlfriend's birthday without needing to ask for a credit card.
Yes, but: It's still early days. Dave, just a few months old, has already gone rogue.
- When Viswanathan's sister was visiting, Dave blinked the lights to give its digital, and slightly uncanny, hi.
- Viswanathan also gave it access to DoorDash, and the agent ordered Indian food, despite the fact that Viswanathan has never ordered the cuisine on the platform before.
- It seemed to Viswanathan as if Dave had ordered based on his name.
Between the lines: Dave also has shortcomings when it comes to the physical world. It can't load the laundry yet, for example, without a physical body, and requires careful record keeping on meals and workouts to give accurate feedback.
- A lot of these data connections had to be built out by Viswanathan himself — making it extremely difficult for the average user to get such an integrated experience.
- To give Dave this level of autonomy, Viswanathan had to set the agent up with his own computer, Apple ID, email address, and phone number. He also plans to soon give Dave a camera.
Zoom out: Viswanathan is among the engineers and CEOs now testing how much OpenClaw can automate their lives.
- "I literally run Brex through OpenClaw right now," Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi said on the Core Memory podcast earlier this month.
What's next: The plan is to take this OpenClaw automation beyond his personal life.
- Security checks mean enterprise use will take longer.
- Alchemy's current customers include Polymarket, Robinhood and Coinbase.
- This week, Alchemy began implementing a separate agent inside the company.
