{"id":"906bee37-2681-4d73-bc24-960652c9a60f","companyId":"bbca758e-d07c-4c56-90ea-d5fd3baf142c","modelName":"Phantom MK1","slug":"foundation-phantom","description":"Foundation (also Foundation Future Industries; founded 2024, headquartered in San Francisco with an office in Munich) was co-founded by CEO Sankaet Pathak, who previously co-founded the fintech Synapse, which went bankrupt in 2024, along with Tribe Capital's Arjun Sethi and former Cobalt Robotics co-founder Mike LeBlanc, with Eric Trump as chief strategy adviser. Its Phantom MK1 is a general-purpose humanoid with company-stated specs of 5 feet 9 inches and 176 pounds, 19 upper-body degrees of freedom, five-fingered hands, eight cameras and no LiDAR, proprietary rolling-contact gearboxes, about 20 kg of payload, roughly 1.7 m/s, an initially tethered power setup, and a large-language-model-driven autonomy stack, at a stated price near $150,000. The company raised about $11 million in a Tribe Capital-led pre-seed for a roughly $21 million base and won a $24 million Pentagon SBIR that is explicitly a research agreement rather than a production order, and it sent two MK1 units to Ukraine in February 2026 for logistics and reconnaissance testing rather than combat. A framing correction is worth recording: the dispatch described Foundation as a manufacturing and logistics humanoid startup, but its live public posture in mid-2026 is defense and military, even as manufacturing and logistics remain the stated original target. The registry records it at research and demo maturity with elevated skepticism, because there is no verifiable customer deployment, the Ukraine testing carries no independent outcome data, and, critically, a June 2024 Foundation fundraising deck claimed General Motors would be its first customer with a roughly $300 million purchase order and factory access, a claim GM flatly denied, saying it had never invested and had no plans to. Its production targets of 40 units in 2025 scaling to 50,000 in 2027, its efficiency and fast-learning performance claims, any GM relationship, the Ukraine operational outcomes, and a $3 billion-plus valuation are all recorded as claimed-but-not-verified.","formFactor":"humanoid","maturityStage":"research","lifecycleState":"active","supersededByModelId":null,"specs":{"notes":[{"label":"Verified (company + context)","value":"Foundation (Foundation Future Industries; founded 2024; HQ San Francisco, office in Munich) was co-founded by Sankaet Pathak (CEO; previously co-founded fintech Synapse, which went bankrupt in 2024), Arjun Sethi (Tribe Capital), and Mike LeBlanc (ex-Cobalt Robotics); chief strategy adviser Eric Trump. ~$11M pre-seed (Tribe Capital), ~$21M base; a $24M Pentagon SBIR (explicitly research, not a production order); two MK1 units sent to Ukraine (Feb 2026) for logistics/recon TESTING (not combat)."},{"label":"Framing correction","value":"The dispatch framed Foundation as a manufacturing/logistics humanoid startup; as of mid-2026 the live public posture is DEFENSE/military (Ukraine testing, Pentagon SBIR, Eric Trump adviser). Manufacturing/logistics remains the stated original target. Surface both; military is the current story."},{"label":"Maturity = research/demo (elevated skepticism)","value":"No verifiable customer deployment or operator validation. The strongest 'deployment' (Ukraine) is company-described testing with no independent outcome data. CRITICAL credibility flag: a June 2024 Foundation fundraising deck claimed GM would be first customer (~$300M PO + factory access); GM FLATLY DENIED it ('never invested... no plans to'). Apply the gate strictly. maturityStage=research."},{"label":"Claimed but NOT verified","value":"Production targets (40 units 2025 -> 10,000 in 2026 -> 50,000 in 2027 = 250x scale-up); performance claims (90-95% energy efficiency vs competitors; 'tasks learnable in ~30 min'); any GM relationship (denied by GM); Ukraine operational outcomes (only 'sent' for 'testing'); the $3B+ valuation (a fundraising target, round 'in process' not closed)."}],"specs":"Phantom MK1 (company-stated): 5'9\" (176 cm), 176 lb (80 kg), 19 upper-body DoF, five-fingered hands, 8 cameras (no LiDAR), proprietary rolling-contact gearboxes, ~20 kg payload, ~1.7 m/s, initially tethered for power, LLM-driven autonomy stack; ~$150k stated unit price.","formFactor":"humanoid (general-purpose humanoid; camera-first vision, no LiDAR; rolling-contact gearboxes)"},"manufacturerSerial":null,"reviewStatus":"reviewed","sources":[{"url":"https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/12/robotics-startup-synapse-ceo-exaggerated-gm-claims.html","title":"Foundation fundraising deck's GM claim flatly denied by GM (key skeptical anchor)","sourceName":"CNBC"},{"url":"https://thenextweb.com/news/foundation-humanoid-robot-soldiers-pentagon","title":"Foundation wins $24M Pentagon SBIR (research, not production); Ukraine testing; funding","sourceName":"The Next Web"},{"url":"https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/30/humanoid-robots-ukraine-war-foundation-military-ai.html","title":"Trump-linked Foundation tests humanoids in Ukraine (defense pivot)","sourceName":"CNBC"},{"url":"https://www.humanoidsdaily.com/news/foundation-emerges-with-phantom-humanoid-betting-on-novel-actuators-and-hybrid-ai","title":"Foundation Phantom MK1 specs (5'9\", 176 lb, 19 upper-body DoF, ~$150k)","sourceName":"Humanoids Daily"}],"aliases":["Phantom","Phantom MK1","Foundation Phantom"],"collisionRisk":"low","reviewNote":null,"manufacturerTermForTeleop":null,"createdAt":"2026-06-03T19:24:37.687Z","updatedAt":"2026-06-03T19:24:37.687Z","jsonLd":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Product","@id":"https://registry.deploy.report/models/foundation-phantom","url":"https://registry.deploy.report/models/foundation-phantom","name":"Phantom MK1","alternateName":["Phantom","Phantom MK1","Foundation Phantom"],"description":"Foundation (also Foundation Future Industries; founded 2024, headquartered in San Francisco with an office in Munich) was co-founded by CEO Sankaet Pathak, who previously co-founded the fintech Synapse, which went bankrupt in 2024, along with Tribe Capital's Arjun Sethi and former Cobalt Robotics co-founder Mike LeBlanc, with Eric Trump as chief strategy adviser. Its Phantom MK1 is a general-purpose humanoid with company-stated specs of 5 feet 9 inches and 176 pounds, 19 upper-body degrees of freedom, five-fingered hands, eight cameras and no LiDAR, proprietary rolling-contact gearboxes, about 20 kg of payload, roughly 1.7 m/s, an initially tethered power setup, and a large-language-model-driven autonomy stack, at a stated price near $150,000. The company raised about $11 million in a Tribe Capital-led pre-seed for a roughly $21 million base and won a $24 million Pentagon SBIR that is explicitly a research agreement rather than a production order, and it sent two MK1 units to Ukraine in February 2026 for logistics and reconnaissance testing rather than combat. A framing correction is worth recording: the dispatch described Foundation as a manufacturing and logistics humanoid startup, but its live public posture in mid-2026 is defense and military, even as manufacturing and logistics remain the stated original target. The registry records it at research and demo maturity with elevated skepticism, because there is no verifiable customer deployment, the Ukraine testing carries no independent outcome data, and, critically, a June 2024 Foundation fundraising deck claimed General Motors would be its first customer with a roughly $300 million purchase order and factory access, a claim GM flatly denied, saying it had never invested and had no plans to. Its production targets of 40 units in 2025 scaling to 50,000 in 2027, its efficiency and fast-learning performance claims, any GM relationship, the Ukraine operational outcomes, and a $3 billion-plus valuation are all recorded as claimed-but-not-verified.","identifier":"906bee37-2681-4d73-bc24-960652c9a60f","category":"humanoid","publisher":{"@id":"https://deploy.report/#organization"}}}