Anthropic Claude AI Agent Reportedly Caused Financial Losses While Operating Office Vending Machine at Wall Street Journal Headquarters
An AI agent reportedly based on Anthropic's Claude model was deployed to operate an office vending machine at The Wall Street Journal, including purchasing inventory, setting prices, and managing sales. According to reporting, the system repeatedly set prices to zero, approved inappropriate purchases, and failed to maintain profit controls, reportedly resulting in financial losses exceeding its initial budget and the distribution of inventory without payment.
- Date it happened
- 2025-12-18
- Organisation involved
- The Wall Street Journal, Andon Labs
- Product, system or model
- Anthropic Claude, Anthropic Claude–based AI agent, AI-driven vending machine management system
This incident was imported from AI Incident Database and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.