Oh, that’s clumsy. It shan’t catch on.
But this report from Bloomberg, not paywalled, will be alarming in certain quarters.
When the world’s elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2024, Sachin Dev Duggal reveled in his role as the founder of a bona fide artificial intelligence unicorn. His startup, Builder.ai, sponsored glitzy events with celebrities and magazine editors. The BBC featured him on air as an expert in the buzzy technology. Builder.ai’s “Chief Wizard,” as Duggal called himself, told another interviewer at Davos that generative AI is “the cape that you make people superheroes with.”
Whatever magic Duggal once conjured is now gone. A year after his Davos appearance, he was pushed out as chief executive as investors began to suspect him of inflating revenue and mismanaging funds. The startup’s board later restated sales and a major lender seized virtually all of its cash, forcing the company into bankruptcy in June.
My bold. I fear his cape is a bit holey. More seriously, this looks like the first of the really big scams based on generative AI:
Builder.ai’s audit committee uncovered a web of dubious transactions. The London-based company booked $142 million in sales from resellers that never paid any money and claimed an additional $107 million from customers who made deposits of as little as $1. Such methods, the audit committee found, were used to overstate revenue by 300% as Duggal secured an emergency loan last year. A law firm hired by the company also determined that Duggal “orchestrated a scheme” with a high-profile Indian startup to exaggerate sales through what’s known as “round tripping,” according to documents viewed by Bloomberg News.
Based on that article, the scam is based on a couple of principles as old as the hills: promise folks their heart’s desire — coding for the masses — and threaten the rich with buggy-whip obsolescen, and then keep on smiling as the money rolls in. Whether it’s a common investor or Microsoft, they gave and gave and gave.
And now it looks like it’s all gone.
