Foundation, founded in 2024 by Sankaet Pathak, Arjun Sethi, and Mike LeBlanc, initially pitched its humanoid robots for factories and warehouses. Over the course of 2025, it pivoted toward defense, a shift that surprised some employees and prompted at least two to quit, according to a former employee.

"Nobody was comfortable with it," the former employee said, describing the reaction to the company's move into weaponry.

At the center of Foundation's ambitions is the Phantom MK-2, a 200-pound, 6-foot-tall aluminum humanoid that Pathak says is strong enough to pick up a human. The robot has not made its public debut, but it is being developed alongside the MK-1, which the company has demonstrated loading mortar shells—a task it failed to complete in 15 minutes during a July visit.

Experts say such demonstrations highlight a vast gap between the marketing and the technology. "There is a discrepancy between what the market is expecting right now and what the technology is able to provide," said Giuseppe Loianno, a UC Berkeley professor who runs the Agile Robotics and Perception Lab. "It's not a time gap of, let's say, two years or three years [but] a decade or even more."

Scott Patterson, an 11-year Marine veteran and CEO of a San Francisco robotics laundry startup, was blunt after watching a video of the mortar-loading demo. "I just was like, oh, God, why? You don't need a humanoid robot for that. You just make an auto turret."

Foundation's military claims have also drawn questions. In February 2026, the company said it had sent two robots to Ukraine for supply-run and reconnaissance testing. But journalist Craig Smith, who accompanied the team, said they never crossed the border, and Ukrainian defense technology organization Brave1 confirmed no demos took place. LeBlanc later wrote in an email that he "didn't mean to suggest we'd actually delivered a demo."

In April 2026, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo announced that Foundation had "just secured a $24 million contract with the Pentagon." Federal spending records show no such contract awarded to Foundation. Its subsidiary, Boardwalk Robotics, holds four contracts totaling $3.22 million. A year earlier, Boardwalk's research partner IHMC secured a $24.8 million Navy contract, which may explain the figure.

A pitch deck titled "Humanoids for War," first reported by independent journalist Mike Kalil, claimed $73 million in Department of War contracts and $100 million in contracted annual revenue from industrial customers. Pathak defended the claims on X, stating the company "has done over $70M in real work across our prime and subcontractor relationships." He did not respond to requests for comment on the contracts, the pitch deck, or Ukraine.

The company's political ties have also raised eyebrows. In March 2026, Foundation brought on Eric Trump, an investor, as chief strategy adviser. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called Trump's involvement "corruption in plain sight," though Pathak noted that "our contracts predate Eric's involvement to the company."

Foundation's history includes a previous venture by Pathak, Synapse, a banking-as-a-service startup that filed for bankruptcy in April 2024. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted inadequate customer records and a $60 million to $90 million shortfall in funds. Pathak blamed partner banks.

In 2024, Foundation's fundraising materials touted a relationship with General Motors that suggested a potential $300 million order. GM called the claim "fabricated," forcing Foundation to acknowledge it had overstated the relationship. LeBlanc told CNBC they were "embarrassed."

Despite the questions, Foundation is planning a rapid expansion. Having outgrown its 20,000-square-foot SoMa offices, the company is scouting a second location and claims the expansion would boost capacity from 1,000 units a year to 5,000. It has partnered with chipmaker AMD and says its robots helped manufacture more than 24,000 cars for unnamed automakers last year—though Pathak clarified that "help" meant "a lot of racking and kitting," not actual assembly.

As of August, Foundation was leasing its MK-1 robot annually for $100,000 per unit, with a 100-unit minimum. The MK-2 is expected to lease at $75,000 a unit. Pathak hopes to get the price down to $10,000. "A lot of these will get blown up, and thus we want to make them as cheap as possible," he said.

Asked who decides if a robot can kill autonomously, Pathak declined to weigh in. His robots can't do that right now, he said, but that could be added. "We'd have to enable that as a capability, and the military would have to ask for that explicitly."

And if a robot malfunctions, who is responsible for a potential war crime? Someone in the military might be "reprimanded," he said. "I don't know."

For now, Foundation's military ambitions may be easier to sell than to deliver. As Loianno put it, "We should be grounded on what currently this technology can do."