I am a former employee from a few years ago. I didn't stay very long at all though.
In 2019 its former Chief Business Officer sued them for fraud, claiming that apps were built by Indian developers despite the claim that it was "80%" done by AI. There were detailed articles in the Wall Street Journal and The Verge at the time. I've found one reference saying it was settled out of court (the Telegraph), though I thought I'd previously read the case was dismissed.
When I was there 3 years later:
- the company had been renamed from Engineer.ai to Builder.ai
- the marketing materials still heavily pushed the claim that apps were 80% built by AI, curiously the exact same figure as it had been 3 years earlier
- there was a bunch of automation around small parts of the software development process. When customers went to create a new project there was an AI chatbot assistant (Natasha), which amongst other things asked the customer for their requirements, and created some estimates for how long things would take. There was also some automation for turning UI mockups into CSS styles and then merging the styles with templated React components. These various small bits of automation did have teams of real engineers working on it in the UK and the US. However, by and large it didn't really work. It seemed to me that the Indian outsourced programmers working on client projects totally ignored this technology anyway, and just went about their jobs as though it didn't exist. Despite being employed to work on this tech, I never had any interaction with the Indian developers building real client projects.
- a new team was spun up to use Generative AI to create frontend mock ups of an application from template components. This was integrated into the flow when potential clients were chatting with the Natasha AI chatbot. Some people worked genuinely hard on this project, and to some extent it did function. However, it didn't do much beyond the many other "create a frontend mockup from a single prompt" projects out there, other than having access to the company's internal React component templates. As far as I'm aware these frontend mockups were never used by the Indian developers who built the final projects.
In the tech world there is a very wide blurred zone between "outright fraud, which leads to a conviction in court" and "exagerrated claims". Given the extent to which Builder.ai committed literal fraud with their revenue figures and accounting, and given the hundreds of millions of dollars they raised on very limited real sales, I believe their claims about AI could plausibly also be literal fraud. However, the standards of a court case are much higher than my personal use of the word "fraud". I'm tempted to believe Musk is also bordering on fraud with e.g. the Boring Company, or his repeated claims about how close Tesla is to fully automated self-driving robo taxis. But given Tesla is building a genuine product with genuinely high sales and revenue, and given how much other crazy stuff Musk does that makes these exagerrated claims pale in comparison, it's not something that's ever going to lead to a court case.
Thanks for sharing this inside information. It's really helpful and gives me (and others researching this case) a better understanding of what was happening behind closed doors.
I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind:
1. I checked on LinkedIn and saw that most employees are based in India. Is that correct?
2. From what I understand, customers knew their apps were being built by developers, and they could use an internal tool called Studio to track progress and view the names of the developers assigned to tasks. Is that accurate?
3. Did you work with Craig Saunders, the Head of AI? I heard he was attending events and demoing some internal apps he had built, and that people were pretty impressed. Do you know what exactly he was showing?
4. The builder.ai website never claimed to use GenAI, only AI, and it clearly says that their virtual assistant, Natasha, assigns developers to projects. Have you ever seen Natasha doing this in action?
Thanks again for speaking up and helping clear up some of the confusion.
My inside information is both outdated and minimal, I was there for a short time a few years ago.
As far as I know all the development work on client projects was done by developers in India. I was too far removed from the details to know quite how they were employed and paid - I literally never had any interaction with them - but I suspect this is the main source of the LinkedIn employees.
As far as I know customers were aware apps were being built by human developers, the "80% by AI" was prominent on the website and the sign up process but it was never claimed the whole thing was automated.
It looks like Craig Saunders joined only a year ago, in June 2024, which is long after I left. Given how much AI has advanced over the last few years, and given his LinkedIn shows he previously held a senior AI role at Amazon, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if he and other employees built some impressive tech demos over the last year or two.
Regarding Natasha assigning developers to projects, I don't know to what extent it was really automated, I wasn't involved in that.
Here's the thing. The website doesn't say that 80% of the code was created using AI. That's what the fake article claims. What the site actually says is:
---
Natasha is your AI product manager.
Using machine learning algorithms, she recommends the features you need, based on the type of app you're building.
Natasha also creates an instant prototype for you, helping visualise your idea.
80% of this information is gathered automatically.
---
A few things to point out:
1. The site says it uses algorithms, not GenAI, to make recommendations and create a prototype. I assume that means some visual mockups or images of the suggested features.
2. It says it creates "80% of the information", not 80% of the code. That line is clearly referring to the recommendations, not the final software.
People spreading fake news scanned the site, misunderstood how AI works, and twisted the wording to fit their own narrative.
If you scroll down it also says 60% of the code is automated. Both percentages are essentially meaningless. If you require customers to type all their requirements into a static web based form does that also count as 80% automated information gathering? If 60% of an application is templated components does that mean code generation is 60% automated?
It's meaningless, and I suspect intentionally so. It clearly implies that they were doing things in a more advanced way than a standard Indian outsourcing firm, an implication heightened by hiring people to build impressive tech demos. But the impressive tech demos and the work on real client projects were two entirely separate things.
In 2019 its former Chief Business Officer sued them for fraud, claiming that apps were built by Indian developers despite the claim that it was "80%" done by AI. There were detailed articles in the Wall Street Journal and The Verge at the time. I've found one reference saying it was settled out of court (the Telegraph), though I thought I'd previously read the case was dismissed.
When I was there 3 years later:
- the company had been renamed from Engineer.ai to Builder.ai
- the marketing materials still heavily pushed the claim that apps were 80% built by AI, curiously the exact same figure as it had been 3 years earlier
- there was a bunch of automation around small parts of the software development process. When customers went to create a new project there was an AI chatbot assistant (Natasha), which amongst other things asked the customer for their requirements, and created some estimates for how long things would take. There was also some automation for turning UI mockups into CSS styles and then merging the styles with templated React components. These various small bits of automation did have teams of real engineers working on it in the UK and the US. However, by and large it didn't really work. It seemed to me that the Indian outsourced programmers working on client projects totally ignored this technology anyway, and just went about their jobs as though it didn't exist. Despite being employed to work on this tech, I never had any interaction with the Indian developers building real client projects.
- a new team was spun up to use Generative AI to create frontend mock ups of an application from template components. This was integrated into the flow when potential clients were chatting with the Natasha AI chatbot. Some people worked genuinely hard on this project, and to some extent it did function. However, it didn't do much beyond the many other "create a frontend mockup from a single prompt" projects out there, other than having access to the company's internal React component templates. As far as I'm aware these frontend mockups were never used by the Indian developers who built the final projects.
In the tech world there is a very wide blurred zone between "outright fraud, which leads to a conviction in court" and "exagerrated claims". Given the extent to which Builder.ai committed literal fraud with their revenue figures and accounting, and given the hundreds of millions of dollars they raised on very limited real sales, I believe their claims about AI could plausibly also be literal fraud. However, the standards of a court case are much higher than my personal use of the word "fraud". I'm tempted to believe Musk is also bordering on fraud with e.g. the Boring Company, or his repeated claims about how close Tesla is to fully automated self-driving robo taxis. But given Tesla is building a genuine product with genuinely high sales and revenue, and given how much other crazy stuff Musk does that makes these exagerrated claims pale in comparison, it's not something that's ever going to lead to a court case.