Sankaet Pathak Presses On with Robotics Startup Despite Previous Financial Setbacks

Sankaet Pathak Presses On with Robotics Startup Despite Previous Financial Setbacks
Image credit: Forbes 

Foundation Robotics Startup's Ambitious Goals

Sankaet Pathak, despite the ongoing financial issues at his previous fintech startup Synapse, is moving forward with his new venture, Foundation. The robotics startup aims to develop advanced humanoid robots designed to tackle labor shortages by operating in complex environments. Foundation has already secured $11 million in pre-seed funding from Tribe Capital and other angel investors, as stated by TechCrunch.

Synapse's Financial Troubles and Missing Funds

Pathak’s former startup, Synapse, which provided embedded banking services for fintechs, faced significant challenges in 2023. After a period of layoffs, Synapse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April. By July, it was reported that nearly $160 million in customer deposits remained inaccessible, with the exact amount still unaccounted for. Pathak, who founded Synapse in 2014 and led it until May, has pointed fingers at Synapse’s former partner, Evolve Bank, for the missing funds. Pathak has publicly criticized Evolve for not addressing the deficit and has made details about the shortfalls available for public scrutiny.

Foundation's Vision and Technical Ambitions

In a recent social media post, Pathak elaborated on Foundation's mission to "automate GDP through AI and robotics," aiming to alleviate people from labor-intensive jobs and allow them to follow their passions. He emphasized the need for real-world foundation models to achieve this goal and highlighted the challenge of collecting the vast amounts of data required for effective training. Pathak also asserted that Foundation's technology, which includes capabilities for scene depth, object detection, semantic segmentation, and unseen object pose estimation, surpasses current autonomous vehicle perception technologies. The immediate goal for Foundation is to develop a walking humanoid robot by the end of the year.

Mixed Industry Reactions and Future Prospects

The potential for general-purpose humanoid robots remains debated within the tech community. As TechCrunch's hardware editor Brian Heater noted in June, numerous engineering challenges must be addressed before such robots become a practical reality. Nonetheless, Pathak's ambitious vision for Foundation represents a bold step forward in the robotics field, seeking to combine advanced software, hardware, and infrastructure to achieve its goals.