cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/54410957
Key Points
- Robot startup Foundation has failed to pay employees since missing its Oct. 30 payroll, angering some workers after its CEO borrowed $4.6 million from the firm last year to buy a luxury home, according to people familiar with the matter.
- CEO and co-founder Sankaet Pathak is Foundation’s sole board member, raising governance concerns among prospective investors.
- Foundation’s widely reported $24 million in Pentagon contracts actually stems from its 2024 acquisition of Boardwalk Robotics, which held some existing government research contracts, the people said.
- Pathak’s previous company, Synapse, collapsed in 2024, leaving thousands of customers without access to deposits. Pathak reportedly took loans from Synapse as it neared bankruptcy.
This clown standing next to a movie prop looks so ridiculous. The whole thing was a scam from the start. Battlefield robots look like this:
So… this company worked as designed.
This is what VC’s do. Load up a company with debt and then kill it and declare bankruptcy.
True. But generally they do it by selling off assets and doing layoffs, then paying out huge salaries and bonuses over time. To just take out a huge loan that makes the company completely illiquid practically overnight seems way more blatant and yet…I have zero faith anything will happen.
Fair point.
I kind of just expect this weird shit rich people are doing to get worse and worse until January, when they might at least get dragged in front of a committee for it.
Fingers crossed, but wouldn’t it also require DOJ compliance? (I don’t entirely know how it works in terms of a committee enforcing findings)
See, these assholes don’t even see this as thievery or fraud. This prick believes he is entitled to that money, and how dare you - or anyone - judge him for his actions!
Fuck this guy, and everyone like him who thinks that their whimsical and capricious wants and desires should take immediate priority over the basic needs of literally every other living thing in the universe.
He knows he’s not entitled to it.
He knows it’s a grift, and he knows he will get away with it, and no one will stop him.
And that is why he believes that he is entitled to it
You’re not wrong, but neither am I
CEO almost always means terrible person apparently
Following his daddies footsteps in bankrupting companies. How cute.
Eric didn’t take the money
Part of me loves this because it does mean the dystopia of the final product is delayed (kind of).
This kind of story just reassures me that any doombot they make will probably self destroy itself like all the evil robot in RoboCop. Only a real human brain will ever make these things compliant enough to take orders.
Now don’t go giving them ideas, the warhammer 40k Servitors should just stay a grimdurrk sciencefiction story.
