AI 'Washers' Can't Exaggerate Their Way Out of This One
The collapse of a high-flying startup may mark a broader decline in the practice of secretly using humans behind a curtain.
Deflated.
Photographer: Zed Jameson/Bloomberg
Startups come and mostly go, but Builder.ai is an unusual case.
Having raised $445 million from investors including Microsoft Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp., the British firm entered insolvency proceedings this week after a major creditor seized $37 million from its accounts, leaving $5 million in the company’s coffers. Builder.ai’s former staff told Bloomberg News that it had been inflating its sales figures to investors, forcing the company to lower its sales estimates in March. But that wasn’t the only thing it inflated: When I investigated the startup back in 2019, workers told me that its core technology of building apps with artificial intelligence was mostly being done by software developers in Ukraine and India.