Once again, we’re reminded that AI hype has no brakes — and very few filters.
Builder.ai, once valued at $1.5 billion, promised to let anyone build software as easily as ordering a pizza. It wasn’t just buzzwords — it was a movement.
A movement now revealed to be 700 humans in a trench coat pretending to be an AI named “Natasha.”
Let’s break this down:
- The “AI assistant”? Fake.
- The revenue numbers? Inflated by 300%.
- The product? A glorified service desk wrapped in marketing language.
- The fallout? Massive. Investors burned, employees laid off, lawsuits flying, federal investigations pending.
Microsoft lost $30M. Amazon lost $85M. And anyone paying attention lost another ounce of faith in the term “AI-powered.”
They weren’t building the future.
They were building a pitch deck.
And let’s be honest — this isn’t some outlier.
This is exactly what happens when storytelling outpaces actual tech. When “disruption” becomes the product.
AI is powerful. But power doesn’t mean progress.
Just because something can autocomplete code or spit out a chatbot doesn’t mean it’s remotely autonomous — or sustainable.
At some point, the industry needs to stop being surprised when these startups collapse.
We should be more surprised that they were taken seriously in the first place.
We don’t need more fake assistants.
We need functioning products.
And maybe — just maybe — a little more critical thinking before writing $450 million checks.
It’s time we start talking more openly about what’s real and what’s marketing fiction in AI.
If this isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.
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Curious about the full Builder.ai timeline?
→ Read the original breakdown on Dev.to
