All sizzle, no sauce

May 30, 2025

🫠 All sizzle, no sauce: This is a crazy story. Builder.ai pretended to be AI-powered while secretly running on cheap human developers in India. Founder Sachin Dev Duggal raised $445M from Microsoft, SoftBank and Qatar, faked revenue, and vanished into bankruptcy. The company was valued at $1.5 billion. Turns out its slogan, “as easy as ordering pizza,” meant microwaving frozen code.