💥The $1.5B AI Startup That Faked Everything

The AI era is turning into the wild west.

Builder.ai, a $1.5B Microsoft-backed startup, just imploded after faking its entire AI product. Instead of real automation, the company used 700 human engineers in India to pose as AI — while inflating sales, staging fake demos, and even hiring private investigators to silence whistleblowers.

But amid the chaos, real breakthroughs are landing. Augment Code dropped Remote Agent, cloud-based agents that don’t wait for instructions like Cursor, they proactively fix bugs, build features, and ship code while you’re offline. Mistral launched Mistral Code, an AI coding assistant that works alongside your team like a real engineer. And ElevenLabs released Eleven v3 (alpha), their most expressive voice model yet.

Let’s dive in.

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”

^{– Alan Turing, Father of Artificial Intelligence} 

📈 5 Must-Know AI Tools

Klap – Create viral short clips from long-form videos in seconds. (use code “AIHUB” for 30% off)

GeoSpy – Drop an image and let AI guess where it was taken—no metadata, just pure visual analysis. Try it free with 20 images.

Surfer SEO – Rank higher with AI-powered SEO. Optimize content with real-time scoring, keyword audits, and SERP insights built for serious growth.

AdamCAD – Describe a part, get a 3D model. This text-to-CAD tool turns prompts into parametric designs—ready for export in seconds.

10Web – Launch a full WordPress site with one prompt. AI builds, hosts, and optimizes your site—blazing fast, zero coding.

AI Scam

Microsoft-backed AI Startup Collapses After Faking AI Services

In the middle of the AI gold rush, Builder.ai rose fast — a sleek London startup promising instant app creation through its “AI assistant” Natasha. Investors poured in. Microsoft backed it. Valuation? $1.5 billion. But it was all a lie. Behind the scenes: no real AI, just hundreds of engineers quietly doing the work while pretending it was automated. The company has now filed for bankruptcy. Its founder is under investigation. And its investors are left stunned.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Human-Powered 'AI': Despite claims of AI-driven app development, Builder.ai's services were delivered by 700 engineers in India, with the AI assistant 'Natasha' being a facade.

• Financial Misconduct: The company engaged in "round-tripping" with Indian firm VerSe Innovation to inflate sales figures, misleading investors and stakeholders.

• Investor Impact: Major investors like Microsoft and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund are now facing losses, with Microsoft reportedly owed over $30 million in unpaid cloud services.

• Regulatory Scrutiny: U.S. federal prosecutors have initiated investigations into Builder.ai's financial practices, seeking access to its financial and client data.

Builder.ai wasn’t just a failed startup, it was a $1.5B illusion powered by manual labor, fake sales, and strategic hype. It shows how easy it is to pass off people as AI when the buzz is strong and no one’s asking the hard questions. This isn’t an isolated case. As more “AI startups” chase investor dollars, expect more smoke-and-mirrors plays like this to surface.

👉Check out Builder.ai’s site — it’s still live (for now). Then ask yourself: how many other “AI platforms” look just like this?

ALPHA DROP

(Where we spotlight one powerful tool or feature to help you stay ahead.)

Meet Your New Cloud Dev Team: Augment Code’s Remote Agent

Augment Code just launched Remote Agent, independent AI agents that run in the cloud, tackle engineering tasks end-to-end, and ship PRs while you sleep (literally). Think of them as autonomous cloud teammates you can spin up from inside VS Code — and they’ll handle bug fixes, tests, refactors, or full features, in parallel, on their own branches. Cursor can’t do this. Copilot can’t either.

⚡️ What’s New

• Cloud-Native Agents – Each Remote Agent runs on its own secure, containerized environment in the cloud, with full repo access and task independence.

• Semantic Context Engine – Agents use a blazing-fast semantic index to understand your codebase — even across multi-repo setups. No more token juggling.

• Autonomous, Long-Running Tasks – Agents keep working even after you log off. Run up to 10 in parallel to handle TODOs, flaky tests, and stale docs.

• Seamless VS Code Integration – Spin up, monitor, and SSH into agents directly from your editor. No new tools or learning curves.

• Enterprise-Grade Privacy – Agents never train on your data. Period. Everything runs in a non-extractable, private workspace.

🧪 How It Works

1. Open the Augment tab in VS Code
   → Don’t have it yet? Install the extension

2. Choose Remote Agent from the dropdown

3. Log in with your GitHub account

4. Pick a repo and branch (or let it create one)

5. Type what you want done — fix a bug, refactor, build a feature — and hit Enter

Augment launches a dedicated remote agent in the cloud. You’ll see progress, get alerts when it needs input, and review everything before merging.

Remote Agent is built for real dev work: long-running, autonomous, and context-aware. This isn’t autocomplete. It’s delegation at scale. And it frees you up to focus on what actually matters: strategy, system design, and making the high-leverage calls. The future of engineering won’t be “vibe coding.” It’ll be knowing what to build and letting your AI agents do it.

👉 Start using Remote Agent → Sign up to Augment Code
14-day free trial | Requires VS Code Extension v0.472.1+

Mistral

Mistral’s AI Assistant Is Fully Loaded

Mistral just dropped Mistral Code, an open-source AI coding assistant built for serious devs and secure enterprise use. It’s now in private beta for VS Code and JetBrains. This thing handles full tickets: write new modules, update tests, run shell commands — all from inside your IDE. Powered by four in-house models and built on the Continue framework, it offers completions, code search, chat, and multi-step reasoning in one slick, customizable client.

🧬 Inside the Model Stack

Mistral Code runs on four specialized models:

• Codestral – For intelligent code completions (fill-in-the-middle)

• Codestral Embed – For high-precision code search and retrieval

• Devstral – For agentic task execution and multi-step reasoning

• Mistral Medium – For conversational coding and in-IDE chat

⚙️ What It Can Actually Do

• All-in-One Coding Flow – Autocomplete, search, chat, and refactoring in one place — no tab switching or context loss.

• Scoped Ticket Execution – Handles full workflows: creating modules, updating tests, and running shell commands with approvals.

• Enterprise-Ready – Built-in support for RBAC, audit logs, usage analytics, observability, and admin controls.

• Deploy Anywhere – Use cloud, serverless, or fully on-prem (including air-gapped) depending on your stack.

• Own Your Models – Fine-tune or distill models directly on your codebase — not locked behind closed APIs.

• One Vendor, One SLA – Mistral owns the stack: models, plugin, and support — no third-party juggling.

Together, they support 80+ programming languages and can reason over files, diffs, terminal output, and issues. Teams can fine-tune or post-train the models on private codebases and even distill custom lightweight variants. This is a level of model control not possible with proprietary copilots.

Mistral is delivering a full-stack, open, and secure coding platform that teams can actually own. If you’re scaling AI in the enterprise, this will be one to test.

👉 Apply for the Mistral Code private beta — available now for VS Code & JetBrains.

Elevan Labs

ElevenLabs Just Unlocked Next-Gen Voice AI

ElevenLabs just released Eleven v3 (alpha), their most expressive voice model to date. It supports over 70 languages, multi-character dialogue, and lets you control emotion with audio tags like [whispers], [laughs], and [sighs]. This version gives creators the tools to build voiceovers that actually sound human, complete with reactions, interruptions, and layered conversations.

It’s not plug-and-play (you’ll need to prompt it carefully), but the payoff is huge: voices that react, interrupt, emote, and actually feel alive. It’s perfect for audiobooks, storytelling, and cinematic AI media. Oh, and it’s 80% off through June.

👉 Try ElevenLab for free →

🔥 Must-Read Free AI Resources

Want to level up fast? Here are some of the best free resources we've found:

Guides:

• Build AI Agents (OpenAI Practical Guide)
  A step-by-step playbook on designing and deploying AI agents for real-world use. Read the Guide →

• OpenAI’s AI in the Enterprise Guide
  A practical PDF playbook for using AI across your business — from operations to customer support. Download the Playbook→

• OpenAI’s Guide to Identifying & Scaling AI Use Cases
  A practical guide to identifying, scoring, and scaling high-impact AI opportunities across your org. Explore the Strategy→

• OpenAI Cookbook
  Your go-to resource for code examples, integrations, and best practices when working with OpenAI models. Browse the Cookbook →

• Google’s Prompt Engineering Whitepaper
  Master the art of crafting powerful prompts, from fundamentals to advanced techniques. View the Whitepaper →

• Google’s Agent Companion
  Explore how Google defines, evaluates, and improves AI agents using real-world tasks, benchmarks, and workflows. Check out the Companion →

• Gemini for Workspace Prompting Guide (Google)
  Learn how to write effective prompts for Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and other Workspace tools powered by Gemini. Read the Guide →

• Generative AI Use Cases (Google Cloud)
  Explore real-world generative AI applications from leading companies across industries—perfect for inspiration and strategy.
  Discover the Use Cases →

• Anthropic’s Agent Design Guide
  Learn how Anthropic builds effective AI agents—from choosing the right architecture to testing in real-world workflows. Dig into the Process→

• Claude Prompt Engineering Guide (Anthropic)
  Learn how to craft better prompts for Claude with practical tips on structure, formatting, and output control. Boost results without retraining.
  Refine Your Prompts →

Courses:

• Harvard's AI Courses
  Learn the foundations of AI, machine learning, and more — from one of the top universities. Explore Courses →

• Google Cloud’s AI Training
  Learn AI, machine learning, and LLMs from Google’s experts. Earn badges, build real skills, and learn at your own pace. Start Learning →

• OpenAI’s AI Academy
  Learn how to use AI from the source. OpenAI Academy offers free lessons on prompt engineering, large language models, and more — with no signup required. Join the Academy →

• Microsoft’s AI & Tech Courses
  Learn AI, machine learning, and cloud tools with step-by-step training from Microsoft. Browse Courses →

• NVIDIA’s AI Courses
  Access expert-led courses on AI, deep learning, and accelerated computing. Explore the platform →

⚡ Quick Reads

AI & TECH JOBS

Looking to make your next career move?

These companies are hiring for AI:

PwC: AI & GenAI Data Scientist (Manager) – Build LLM apps, ship RAG pipelines, and lead client delivery on GenAI projects. Full-time across major U.S. cities—big-brand impact with bonus potential.

Handshake: AI Researcher – Push AI boundaries at a startup. Prototype next-gen models, publish new ideas, and move fast with a small, tight-knit team. Fully remote.

Zillow: AI Learning & Enablement Lead – Teach Zillow to use GenAI. Run demos, build AI playbooks, and scale internal adoption. Remote-first with ownership over strategy.

Amazon: Applied Scientist Intern (2025) – Research LLMs, publish papers, and prototype real-world ML at Amazon. Paid internship for PhDs and MS students—multiple locations, not remote.

Free Resources to Increase Productivity

Boost your productivity with our free, downloadable resources—no sign-up required! Whether you're new to AI or ready to level up, we’ve got you covered.

What’s Inside: 
📄 AI Starter Kit
📄 Prompt Starter Kit 
📄 5 Practical Automation Workflows 

👇 Download everything in one click:
🔗 AI Innovations Hub – Free Downloadable Bundle

Explore Our AI Tools Directory

Looking for the best AI tools? Our Free AI Tools Directory is your ultimate resource for discovering top-notch AI solutions. We've done the heavy lifting by curating only the best tools, so you can focus on what matters most—getting things done.

We’re not here to hype AI — we’re here to help you actually use it, understand it, and learn as it evolves. Whether you’re testing a new tool, trying to automate something tedious, or just trying to keep up with what’s happening, we hope this newsletter gave you something genuinely worth your scroll.

We’ll be back soon with more ways to explore, build, and stay ahead in the AI world.

Until then, follow us on Instagram for the latest scoops and real-time updates.

Catch you in the next one,

— AI Innovations Hub