We are stuck in a pyramid scheme

Here is what I recently read about a company called Builder.ai and perhaps you did too? Here was a $1.5 billion company that had promised to make app designing as simple as "ordering a pizza" using an AI environment called Natasha.

- NISHA | SUSAN

Here is what I recently read about a company called Builder.ai and perhaps you did too? Here was a $1.5 billion company that had promised to make app designing as simple as "ordering a pizza" using an AI environment called Natasha. Apparently, the company began to fall apart in 2025 because of a revelation that Natasha was not AI at all and was actually 700 Indian engineers madly typing away. This made me laugh only because it dug up a memory of a video or a cartoon in which we go to the ATM, press buttons expecting high-tech delivery of cash but meanwhile there is someone behind the wall in a safari suit whose manly arm comes out of the slot. You know, low-tech silliness. Not that bad decisions leading to the loss of employment and well-being of innocent parties is otherwise funny in any way.

Life can be full of hard-to-believe-is-this-true comedy but apparently in the case of Builder.ai, I hear that this story wasn't quite it. The truth about Builder.ai's collapse was reportedly more about investors finding out about sketchy accounting. Builder.ai was allegedly not making as much money as it was telling its investors it was. You can see why someone wanted the other story to be true. The idea of Natasha on the outside being Nitesh on the inside with a BE and not just one Nitesh with a BE but many Niteshes with many BEs, is irresistible.