Getty Image
The website for Builder.ai says, “We believe the power of software can unlock every human’s potential.” Unfortunately, that credo apparently didn’t work for themselves as the company, previously one of the United Kingdom’s most hyped AI startups, is now broke and accused of being a complete fraud.
During its most recent fundraising round, Builder.ai was valued at $1.5 billion. Truly an amazing feat considering Binance now reports that the founder and former CEO of the company, Sachin Dev Duggal (pictured above), “not only created a fake AI company that was ‘all humans, no intelligence,’” he also “dared to falsely report 300% revenue to investors.”
Impressive.
According to Binance, the AI programming company’s backend “does not have AI; it is just a group of Indian developers pretending to write code as AI.” Binance also reports that “multiple current and former employees reported that some pricing and scheduling calculations were done by traditional software, with most of the remaining work done manually by employees.”
Incredibly, the company has reportedly been operating this way for eight years!
Silicon reports that after an internal investigation conducted by a law firm appointed by the board, it was discovered that Builder.ai had potentially fraudulent sales and had massively inflated their sales revenue.
The company had received large amounts of funding from investors like Microsoft, the Qatar Investment Authority, the World Bank’s IFC, WndrCo, Lakestar, and SoftBank’s DeepCore. One investor, Viola Credit, lent Builder.ai $50 million in 2023. They recently seized $37 million from the company’s accounts. With only $5 million in the company’s account and that money being restricted by government regulations, it left the company unable to meet payroll or to continue operation.
Builder.ai said in a statement this week, “Despite the tireless efforts of our current team and exploring every possible option, the business has been unable to recover from historical challenges and past decisions that placed immense pressure on the company’s financial position.”
Making matters even worse for the company’s founder, Sachin Dev Duggal, the Financial Times reports that he is involved in an investigation into a money laundering criminal case in India.
Content shared from brobible.com.