Microsoft-Backed AI Startup “Builder.ai” Faces Collapse After $1.5 Billion Valuation Revealed to Be Driven by Indian Engineers

Sure thing, let’s dive into this chaotic rewrite:

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You know, AI’s like this wild rollercoaster we all got thrown onto without asking — speeding along and who knows where it’s headed. Everyone’s buzzing about it, but there’s this group of folks waving their arms, shouting, “Watch out!” Builder.ai is one of those voices, and boy, their story’s a trip.

Look, AI isn’t just pulling in some pocket change; it’s raking in mountains of cash. Companies like NVIDIA are riding high on this wave, sitting pretty at over $3 trillion — can you even imagine that? Yet, there are those who kind of, well, take advantage of all the buzz. Like, they slap the AI label on their projects, and voilà, venture capitalists open their wallets wide. Builder.ai somehow fits into this wild scene.

So Builder.ai was this shiny new thing claiming to build apps with a sprinkle of magic — or, uh, AI. The tale goes: they had this widget named Natasha doing all this brainy stuff — or so they said. Even Microsoft chucked $445 million at them. Hmmm… sounds like a sci-fi dream come true, right? But, no. Turns out, Natasha was more like a façade painted over a beehive of 700 hard-working Indian coders. Surprise!

Yeah, someone spilled the beans on Twitter. The truth was all the customer’s needs were shipped off to India. There, this gang of developers typed away, making everything run smoothly. Meanwhile, Builder.ai flashed their AI credentials around like they’d reinvented the wheel. Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

And everything seemed so polished with slideshows and snazzy marketing — made you think Natasha was the coding superhero. Well, it wasn’t. The more you dig, the less you find real AI magic. Just a whole lot of human hustle underneath those AI curtains.

Fast forward, Builder.ai got dragged into some serious inquiries by U.S. and U.K. authorities, eventually throwing in the towel to bankruptcy. I mean, it’s not like AI’s all smoke and mirrors — heck, it does a ton of cool stuff — but this saga with Natasha? It shouts a pretty loud warning: don’t get swept away just ‘cause everyone else is riding the AI hype train. Even with big names backing you, falling off can make quite the crash landing.