Builder AI Exposed Human Coders

An AI company called Builder.ai, also known as Engineer.ai, raised about $450 million from investors including Microsoft and SoftBank and reached a valuation of roughly $1.5 billion, but it actually relied on around 700 programmers in India to manually write code instead of using real artificial intelligence. Founded in 2016 and based in London, it marketed an AI assistant named Natasha that it claimed could build apps autonomously while human engineers did the work behind the scenes. In 2025, after a major creditor seized most of its cash and authorities began investigating its practices, Builder.ai filed for bankruptcy and laid off most of its staff.

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