Builder.ai collapses after $1.5B "AI" was just humans in disguise
Builder.ai just filed for bankruptcy after revelations that its $1.5B software platform was actually powered by hundreds of engineers in India pretending to be bots. Internal documents exposed years of manual coding disguised as proprietary AI, alongside inflated revenue schemes and massive unpaid cloud bills. Why it matters: It marks the industry's biggest "AI washing" collapse since ChatGPT, triggering federal fraud probes and sending shockwaves through tech investors.