AI-Native Business Development Intern in San Francisco, California at Aonic

Works with: CEO and the rest of the leadership team Duration: 12 or more weeks, full-time (Summer 2026) Compensation: $5,000–$6,000 / month + meaningful exposure and a potential path to a full-time offer Location: San Francisco (Jackson Square) - onsite, high-collaboration role
About Aonic
We're building the modern, healthy PepsiCo: a next-generation functional nutrition company making vibrant wellness effortless for millions of Americans through scientifically advanced, delicious products.
Our ambition for the next 12 months is extreme: to grow the business 10×, reach $40M in ARR, and become profitable with a lean team of ~10 people.
We believe the next generation of category-defining companies will be built by small teams with extreme leverage, powered by AI, automation, and exceptional people.
The Role
As our AI-Native Business Development Intern, you'll spend the summer doing two things at once: building the AI-powered engine that scales our sales motion, and selling in the field yourself to get our local business-to-business (B2B) effort off the ground.
These two halves feed each other. You'll run real parts of the sales process - sourcing accounts, reaching out, pitching, following up, closing - and then turn what you learn into AI automations that do that work faster and better. The selling teaches the system; the system multiplies the selling.
This is not a research internship. You'll be on the phone, in inboxes, and walking into cafes, gyms, offices, and other accounts across the SF Bay Area - while simultaneously building the tooling that lets one person do the work of five.This internship is intentionally broad and demanding. It's designed for a student who wants maximum learning, real revenue ownership, and steep growth in a single summer.

What You'll Work On
Build AI Automations for Business Development (your core focus)

• Design and build AI-powered workflows across the sales motion: account sourcing and enrichment, lead scoring, personalized outreach, follow-up sequencing, and customer-relationship-management (CRM) hygiene.
• Replace manual, repetitive sales work with reliable systems - and document them so they keep paying off after the summer.
• Continuously look for the highest-leverage point in our funnel and automate it.

Sell, Hands-On, to Train the Engine

• Personally run parts of the sales process end-to-end so you understand what actually converts - then encode that judgment into the automations you build.
• Use real conversations and outcomes as the training signal that makes our AI tooling smarter.

Get Our Local B2B Effort Off the Ground

• Help launch and grow Aonic's B2B presence across the SF Bay Area - think corporate wellness, foodservice, gyms, cafes, and office accounts.
• Source and open new local accounts, run pitches and tastings, and help turn early interest into repeatable, signed business.
• Build the playbook (and the automations behind it) that lets us scale this motion to other markets.

Special Projects

• Tackle high-priority, ad-hoc go-to-market projects directly with the CEO.
• Move fluidly between building systems and closing deals depending on what the business needs that week.

Hard Requirements
To be successful in this internship, all of the following must be true:

• Currently pursuing a degree at a top-tier university in business, engineering, science, math, or a related field.
• AI-native mindset, with hands-on experience using AI tools, automation platforms, and low-code solutions to drive real outcomes - including the technical fluency to build sales automations yourself.
• Genuinely comfortable selling: cold outreach, live pitching, and following up without hand-holding, in person and over the phone.
• Strong communication and relationship-building ability, with the judgment to read a room and the persistence to keep going after a "no."
• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability, with comfort moving between go-to-market strategy and hands-on execution.
• Genuine interest in solving real-world commercial problems and building a business from the ground up.
• Extremely hungry and ambitious, actively seeking responsibility and steep growth.
• Strong work ethic and intensity, comfortable operating closer to 8–7 than 9–5 for the summer.

The Profile We're Looking For
This internship requires a rare mix of traits:

• Book-smart: Strong academic foundation and structured thinking.
• Street-smart: Practical judgment, prioritization, and commercial intuition.
• People-smart: Can build trust quickly, sell without ego, and communicate clearly.
• AI-native: Naturally reaches for AI and automation as a first instinct.
• High-agency: Sees an opening, takes ownership, and executes without waiting for instructions.

Why Intern at Aonic?
Direct Founder Exposure - You'll work side-by-side with the CEO on the go-to-market decisions that shape the company.
Real Revenue Ownership - You'll open real accounts and help land real business, not shadow a sales team.
Unmatched Learning Velocity - This internship compresses years of go-to-market experience into a single summer.
Build and Sell - Few internships let you both create the system and run the motion it powers. This one does.
Elite, Small Team - You'll work with a tight group of highly driven operators in a no-bureaucracy environment.
Modern Stack - We invest in the best AI and automation tools and expect you to use them aggressively.
A Real Path Forward - Strong interns may receive a full-time offer and a launchpad into senior responsibility over time.
CompensationThe base pay range for this role is $40,000 – $60,000 per year.