Microsoft-backed UK tech unicorn Builder.ai collapses into insolvency

Once high-flying group founded by Sachin Dev Duggal says its was unable to recover from ‘past decisions’

Financial Times

The builder.ai story is wild. Microsoft put almost half a billion dollars into them (and lost it all). Everything crumbled when the Financial Times did a tiny amount of research on them, and realised their accounts were signed off a friend of the CEO. As soon as they hired a real auditor, they collapsed.

https://sifted.eu/articles/builder-ai-auditor-founder-news

After hiring a real auditor, the auditor found builder.ai faked three quarters of its sales. https://www.ft.com/content/926f4969-fda7-4e78-b106-4888c8704bda
Microsoft-backed Builder.ai collapsed after finding potentially bogus sales

Failed UK start-up revised down revenues to just a quarter of prior estimates

Financial Times
@GossiTheDog I joined a hyperscaler backed AI company that said they had dozens of customers and were tripling sales every year. Once inside found out they only had two paying customers, neither of which was in prod. They just sorta counted any company they talked to as a customer. Tech was good but was so far from being able to help actual clients in their environment…it was basically a proof of concept that had to be bespoke rebuild from ground up to possibly one day work