Qatar Investment Authority is one of the investors in Builder.ai, the British no-code AI startup to lose millions in investment, $250 million to be exact. Builder.ai filed for bankruptcy after Viola Credit seized $37 million from the company’s accounts leaving $5 million in restricted funds.

Founded in 2016, Builder.ai positioned itself as a revolutionary tool for businesses to build custom apps using AI with minimal coding. It raised over $450 million in total funding, attracting marquee investors like Microsoft, the World Bank’s IFC, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, Lakestar, and SoftBank’s DeepCore incubator, Bloomberg reports. In May 2023, Microsoft made an equity investment and announced plans to integrate Builder.ai’s platform with its own Azure and AI services. Also the lead investor at the time was Qatar Investment Authority. It lead the the series D funding round of $450 million.

At the time the company noted, that the latest round of capital will fuel the company’s continued industry leadership and innovation pipeline allowing further investments in talent, partnerships, and technology; with a bigger focus on using human conversation as the primary user interface for allowing people to build software. The Series D round included participation from additional existing and new investors including Iconiq Capital, Jungle Ventures & Insight Partners

Two years later, Builder.ai will now begin bankruptcy filings in each of its operational jurisdictions, including the U.K., U.S., UAE, Singapore, and India.

Less than two months ago, Builder.ai confirmed it had revised down key sales figures and appointed auditors to examine financials from the past two years. Former employees raised concerns that sales performance had been inflated in previous investor briefings. According to Bloomberg, these allegations triggered a domino effect of investor caution, internal restructuring, and eventual loss of confidence.

Builder.ai, faked business with the Indian social-media startup VerSe Innovation for years to falsely inflate its sales, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and people with direct knowledge of the practice. The two companies routinely billed one another for roughly the same amounts between 2021 and 2024, documents reviewed by Bloomberg show, as part of an alleged practice known as “round-tripping” that the people said Builder.ai used to inflate revenue figures it presented to investors. In many cases, products and services weren’t actually provided to either company for these payments, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Linas Beliunus, Director of Revenue at Zero Hash, in a LinkedIn post noted, ” It turns out the company had no AI, and instead was just a group of Indian developers pretending to write code as AI. Founder & CEO Sachin Dev Duggal has also reported fake revenue to investors. Somehow, the company was able to keep this scam going for 8 years.”