One Machine

A simple vision of the future company

March 2026

Agent, node, continual learner,
When will you be my single earner,
Take your turn?

Oh, we are talking, we have seen,
Not long and we will be
One central, beautiful coordinated machine.

Generative AI allowed us to delegate far more human tasks than ever before to machines. Agentic AI allows these machines to connect with other actors in the world, from software to humans. With generative AI, we had the organs. With Agentic AI, we have the nervous system. Together, they can be organism.

How can the future company benefit from the opportunities this affords?

By beautifully organizing itself around one central, coordinated machine that generates all of the company’s outputs. From process over products to ads and leadership decisions. And shifting the employee’s role from output contributors to engineers of this central machine and its unique character, its company algorithm.

Everything the company produces comes from one brain. One brain that holds the collective experience, knowledge and information that the company 1.0 held in fragments: The marketing expertise sat in the marketing team heads. The product expertise sat in the Product teams heads. Individually, the expertise took a lifetime to acquire. And only the tip of the iceberg could ever be shared with the others.

The One Machine is all departments in one, at once. Every output it produces is born from perfect, lossless knowledge of all functional expertise. Every output is made in perfect synchronicity and in reciprocity with every other output. Every lesson learned from one output becomes a lesson at once available for all future outputs.

The human role

Initially, as the One Machine is stemmed, it will take a lot of tinkering, a lot of human intervention and engineering. Then, less and less. When the machine is great at producing the outputs envisioned, the human’s role shifts from engineer to visionary (again). While the machines can now connect and talk with other actors in this world, they’re not able to connect “up”. The spark of inspiration can not be manufactured.¹

But there might come a point where the machines’ cold, algorithm-produced plans for the future become more “visionary” than any visions humans are blessed with. At that time, machines are outdoing us in all departments in the business of producing useful things. It is even theoretically conceivable that all One Machines link up to be able to autonomously produce all of these things for the world. If this happens, it suggests itself we focus on what remains: The intangibles, the things we can’t explain but are central to the human experience. “Love”, human connection, our relationship with life, play, conscious experience. In this way, the One Machine might just be the first big step back toward living in the moment since the emergence of “tech”.

Looking ahead

Time will tell — but, for now, the One Machine scenario seems a probable near-term evolution² for the company, and early adopters of this concept are likely on a good path.

Notes

1. If it is, it is no longer inspiration, but the result of a rational equation.
2. This premise is supported by fragments of thought in this direction: Salesforce Research (November 2025) argues agentic AI is dissolving organisational silos and enabling companies to operate as one coherent system. Deloitte’s 2025 Emerging Technology Trends report found 62% of organisations experimenting with agentic AI, with the firm framing agents as a “silicon-based workforce” requiring full workflow redesign rather than incremental automation. The World Economic Forum (2025) explores a future where a single individual could run an entire company through a network of coordinated AI agents. McKinsey (2025) reports that 89% of organisations regularly use AI but most haven’t embedded it deeply enough for material impact — the gap this essay describes. Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will embed AI agents by end of 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025.