Foundation Robotics Labs
Foundation Robotics Labs is a San Francisco startup building the Phantom humanoid for industrial and defense customers, founded in 2024 by former Synapse CEO Sankaet Pathak and Mike LeBlanc.
- Type
- startup
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Founded
- 2024-04
- Founders
- Sankaet Pathak, Mike LeBlanc, Arjun Sethi
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- 45
- Disclosed funding
- n/d
- Valuation
- n/d
- Listed
- private
- Website
- foundation.bot
What the record says.
Foundation (legally Foundation Future Industries, earlier Foundation Robotics Labs) was formed in San Francisco in April 2024 by Sankaet Pathak, whose previous company, the banking-software firm Synapse, went bankrupt in 2024 with customer funds missing; Mike LeBlanc, a former Marine and Cobalt Robotics co-founder; and Arjun Sethi of Tribe Capital, which led an USD 11 million pre-seed round in August 2024. Disclosed funding by April 2026 was about USD 21 million; the company was then reported to be seeking USD 500 million at a valuation above USD 3 billion. Eric Trump is chief strategy adviser.
The robot is Phantom, which is the Alex upper-body humanoid Foundation acquired when it bought Boardwalk Robotics of Pensacola in late 2024. The MK-1 is 5 ft 9 in, 176 lb, with 19 degrees of freedom and a 44 lb payload, offered at about USD 150,000 or USD 100,000 a year. The San Francisco Standard put the headcount at 45 in August 2025.
Foundation has leaned into defence: USD 24 million in research contracts with the Army, Navy and Air Force, and two MK-1 units sent to Ukraine in February 2026 for logistics and reconnaissance trials. Its stated plan of 40 units in 2025 rising to 10,000 in 2026 has no public evidence behind it, and the company has already had to walk back an overstated General Motors claim.
1 humanoid tracked.
Sources
- 01FoundationFoundation Robotics Labs
- 02An SF startup is pitching Trump on militarizing humanoid robotsThe San Francisco Standard
- 03
- 04
- 05