Ex-Synapse CEO’s Robot Startup Targets $1 Billion Valuation
The Takeaway
• Synapse’s former CEO founded the startup before the fintech’s collapse
• The startup, Foundation, is close to raising $100 million
• It aims to sell humanoid robots to the military, car makers
A humanoid robotics startup founded by the former chief executive of failed fintech firm Synapse is aiming to finalize a $100 million fundraising that will value the year-old company at $1 billion, according to people who spoke to the company’s founders this week.
The startup is in talks to raise money from the family office of a member of the Saudi Arabia royal family among other investors, according to the people. The steep fundraising target, for a company that has just started to generate revenue, speaks to the recent investor excitement for robotics startups—even those whose leader has a checkered history.
CEO Sankaet Pathak incorporated Foundation in February 2024 shortly before the collapse of fintech Synapse amid a dispute with its banking partners about discrepancies in its ledgers, which saddled customers with tens of millions in unaccounted funds.
The Justice Department’s Southern District of New York convened a grand jury in 2024 to investigate the matter, according to a court filing in the Synapse bankruptcy case. Pathak has publicly denied any wrongdoing and blamed the banks for moving funds they shouldn’t have. He did not respond to a request for comment.
By that point, Pathak was running Foundation, which he co-founded with Tribe Capital co-founder Arjun Sethi and robotics startup cofounder Mike LeBlanc.
The San Francisco-based Foundation makes humanoid robots that aim to perform dangerous jobs in place of people, such as refueling vehicles in conflict zones. The robots could also manufacture goods in places with labor shortages or handle household tasks.
It plans to lease the robots and charge regular fees for software to run them. It’s been generating some revenue so far from grants and trials from customers in the U.S. military, carmakers and supply chain and logistics companies.
The company, which has around 35 employees, earlier this year debuted its first humanoid robot, Phantom. One of the robots played DJ at a San Francisco bar in January.
Last year the company raised $11 million in a seed round from investors including Tribe Capital and Defined Capital, an artificial intelligence-focused venture capital firm that was founded by a former Tribe managing partner. Defined and Tribe are also in talks to invest in Foundation’s latest round, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Foundation is one of a growing number of startups and large tech firms, including Tesla and OpenAI, looking to harness recent breakthroughs in AI to develop robots that can perform a wide variety of tasks. Figure AI, another humanoid robotics startup, has told investors it wants to raise $1.5 billion at a nearly $40 billion valuation despite generating no revenue last year.
The new valuation for Foundation would add to the handful of robot startups worth at least $1 billion, according to The Information’s Generative AI Database. Another humanoid maker, Agility Robotics, has been in talks to raise $400 million at a pre-investment valuation of $1.75 billion.
While investors are enthusiastic, the founders face a host of challenges, including obtaining enough data to train the robots and the rising cost of hardware due to the recent trade war with China.
They are also in fierce competition with each other. Pathak recently posted on X that Figure’s strategy of raising large sums of money before going to market was “flawed and a total distraction.” Pathak also claimed his robots were “twice as strong” as Figure’s.