While some firms aim to deploy humanoid robots for household chores or workplace tasks, Sankaet Pathak and his venture Foundation Future Industries are pursuing a distinct mission: building an all-American robotic supersoldier.
Pathak, chief executive of Foundation, says the company expects to equip its humanoids with lethal functions in the near future, though he declined to provide details. “We have some kinetic things we’re exploring,” he tells WIRED, referring to weapons systems. “We’ll probably unveil something in the next couple of months,” he adds. In addition to combat, the firm says its robots may support logistics, reconnaissance, and inspection duties.
The US military has maintained a sustained interest in humanoids. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency sponsored major humanoid competitions from 2012 to 2015, and the Army runs a program called xTechHumanoids that funds technologies tied to “militarized humanoid capabilities.” Armed forces globally are quickly testing autonomous or semi-autonomous platforms such as aerial drones, small craft, and compact vehicles. Legged machines can navigate harsher terrain, and humanoids are seen as candidates to assume roles now filled by troops. The conflict in Ukraine has become a proving ground for such systems; Foundation reports its Phantom MK1 humanoid has been evaluated with Ukrainian units.
Foundation stands out for its military focus, and the strategy has paid off so far. The company holds government contracts worth millions and counts prominent supporters; Eric Trump, son of the president, is an investor and serves as chief strategy adviser. “People don’t realize he actually is an engineer at heart, so he does a lot of milling and things like that at his home,” Pathak says.
In an April 23 interview on Fox Business, Trump promoted the firm’s robots. “When you go up and you interact with these robots, and they fist-bump you, they high-five you, they follow your commands,” he said. “You bring in AI autonomy, it’s going to change industry, going to change military application, it’s going to change hospitality. The uses are unlimited, and I think it’s a very beautiful thing.”
Foundation launched in 2024. Months later, it bought Boardwalk Robotics, which had collaborated with the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), a Florida nonprofit noted for humanoid research.
During the Fox appearance, the host cited a “$24 million contract with the Pentagon,” but the figure is unclear. When WIRED requested contract details, Foundation pointed to two inherited from Boardwalk and three via IHMC; the company does not appear to have won fresh government funding on its own.
Nonetheless, some see the niche as promising. “If you put a military hat on, it makes a lot of sense, because it’s where soldiers still die—that first entry through a door,” says a roboticist familiar with Foundation who spoke anonymously to protect business ties. “If you look at Fallujah, the first Gulf War, you had several thousand insurgents hiding in 10,000 buildings and [US troops] just going door to door.”
“I think it is so close to feasible that I’m surprised they’re not already fielded,” the person adds.
Like peers, Foundation often shows its robots acting autonomously, yet other specialists argue truly autonomous soldier robots remain far off.
“Right now, it is difficult to disentangle the current state of the art from the potential of the state of the art” with humanoids, says Robert Griffin, a senior research scientist at IHMC who led a Boardwalk-linked project and advised the company. “There’s a bunch of challenges, spanning the whole gamut of robotics, for the idea of building an actual human soldier,” Griffin says.
