Can a bot run a company? A hot new tech venture that wants to run entirely by code thinks so. It's called "The DAO"—short for Decentralized Autonomous Organization—and it aims to run as a for-profit corporate body that will obviate the need for human beings to make business decisions. That is, provided that the human beings behind The DAO can set it up right.

While this leaderless digital profit-maximization machine may sound more like a clever science fiction plot device than a serious investment vehicle, The DAO has raised over $150 million worth of funding on the Ethereum platformsince it first launched a mere month ago. For context, this blew the $116 million record for cryptocurrency-business financing raised by Silicon Valley darling 21 Inc. out of the water. An eyebrow-raising start to be sure, but The DAO faces a long and bumpy road to the world of ubiquitous, autonomous digital organizations that its founders envision.

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