Warren Buffett might never have heard of AI startup Markup AI or its CEO Matt Blumberg. But the billionaire investor has become one of the company’s newest advisors—and it’s all thanks to AI.
Late last year, Blumberg had a problem familiar to many leaders: he wanted sharper feedback than his board of directors could consistently provide. After all, they are largely limited to their own experiences and are not available 24/7.
So, Blumberg decided to build his own.
Working with his executive team, the Markup AI CEO created what he calls a “fantasy board of directors”—a group of AI-generated thought partners designed to challenge his thinking on demand.
After narrowing down a list of famous people in and outside the business world, Blumberg and his team settled on 15 names, including Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and the late Steve Jobs.
And already, the AI board has helped him save hours by generating new ideas, providing feedback on business proposals, and preparing for meetings with real board members.
The ‘fantasy board of directors’ only took an hour to make—and using it to operate at ‘warp speed’
To build the fantasy board, Blumberg used a mix of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to create 5,000-word profiles for each person. The profiles were trained on items in the public domain—with the goal of enabling the AI to respond to problems the way real board members might—grounded in how those business leaders viewed leadership, governance, and performance.
“As a CEO steering a company’s strategy and execution, any additional inputs and learnings and challenges strengthen my work,” Blumberg told Fortune—adding that in the ‘warp speed’ AI space, the fantasy board provides rapid, on-demand insights that traditional board meetings sometimes can’t deliver.
Creating the fantasy board took no more than an hour or two, he said, and is now an “incredible supplemental tool” for everything from preparing for human board meetings or drafting internal projects.
“I’ll say things like: Hey, I’m doing a presentation for our kickoff meeting next week. What do you think are the top three themes I should hit?” he told Business Insider.
He also asked the AI to give him a performance review for 2025, which he said it “nailed” by calling out his appropriate strengths and problems.
Currently, Blumberg is using the technology to prepare for his annual employee kickoff meeting and board meeting. But like with any AI, he emphasized that it’s not perfect.
“With any AI agents, you need to be really careful not to believe the bullshit. They’re predictive, and they’re good, but not perfect. They’re not human, and they miss a lot of cues.”
Companies like JPMorgan Chase and Klarna are diving headfirst into AI
Blumberg’s experiment is part of a broader push by companies to embed AI directly into executive decision-making and corporate governance.
Last week, JPMorgan Chase announced it was severing ties with proxy advisory giants ISS and Glass Lewis, instead relying on an internal, AI-driven voting platform called Proxy IQ to guide shareholder decisions. The move underscored how deeply AI tools are beginning.
Other CEOs have taken the technology even further—sometimes by inserting themselves into the process, virtually.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan appeared on an earnings call last year as an AI-generated avatar, delivering initial prepared remarks in his voice and likeness.
“I am proud to be among the first CEOs to use an avatar in an earnings call,” Yuan’s avatar said. “It is just one example of how Zoom is pushing the boundaries of communication and collaboration.”
This came after Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski conducted a similar rollout of an AI-generated video replica on an earnings call. The fintech company has also launched a 24/7 “AI CEO Hotline,” which answers customer questions in Siemiatkowski’s conversational style, both in English and Swedish.
For Blumberg, however, the technology isn’t about replacement—it’s about augmentation. His real board of directors, he said, hasn’t expressed concern about being replaced anytime soon.
“They viewed the fantasy board the same way I do, which is that it’s a nice add-on, a sort of augmentation of thought partnership,” he said to BI. “But that it’s never going to be a substitute for a real board.”
