Eric Trump-Backed Startup Wants to Send Armed Humanoid Robots Into Combat

Key points

• Foundation Future Industries, founded in 2024, holds government contracts inherited from two earlier companies worth millions of dollars.
• Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, is both an investor and chief strategy adviser at the company.
• The company tested its Phantom MK1 humanoid robot with Ukrainian forces.
• Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks estimates it will take more than a decade before humanoids can reliably operate in complex, unfamiliar settings.
• The next version of the company's robot, Phantom MK2, will be the first model to be waterproof and dustproof.

Sankaet Pathak runs a startup called Foundation Future Industries. Most humanoid robot companies want their machines folding laundry or working factory floors. Pathak has a different target customer: the US military.

Pathak told Wired AI that he plans to give the company's Phantom MK1 robot, a human-shaped machine roughly the size of a person, lethal capabilities within the next couple of months. He called them "kinetic things," which is industry language for weapons systems.

He also said the robots could handle logistics, scouting missions, and building inspections, jobs that currently put human soldiers at risk.

The company has a high-profile backer. Eric Trump, the president's son, is both an investor and the company's chief strategy adviser. On Fox Business in April, he described interacting with the robots: fist bumps, high-fives, following voice commands. "The uses are unlimited," he said.

Is the company actually delivering for the government?

Not yet, on its own. Fox Business reported a "$24 million contract with the Pentagon," but the contracts Foundation shared with reporters came from two earlier organisations: Boardwalk Robotics, which Foundation acquired in 2024, and the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a Florida nonprofit known for humanoid research. Foundation does not appear to have independently won new government money.

That matters if you are trying to gauge how serious the military is about this particular company, as opposed to the broader idea.

And the broader idea does have real support. The US Army runs a programme called xTech Humanoids that funds development of militarised humanoid technology. The war in Ukraine has become a testing ground for dozens of autonomous systems, from aerial drones to small boats. Humanoid robots appeal to planners because, unlike wheeled vehicles, they can climb stairs, open doors, and move through the same spaces human soldiers use.

But building one that actually works in combat is a different problem. Robert Griffin, a senior researcher at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition who worked with Foundation's predecessor company, put it plainly: there is a wide gap between what today's humanoids can do and what a battlefield actually demands.

Perception and navigation still break down in unfamiliar terrain. Picking up an object, including a firearm, remains one of the hardest unsolved problems in robotics. Rodney Brooks, a robotics professor emeritus at MIT and one of the field's founding figures, said in 2025 that even after a solid laboratory demonstration, getting a system reliably deployed takes at least ten years more.

There are ethical questions too. Giving a machine the ability to use deadly force without a human making the final call worries many researchers and policymakers.

Pathak is dismissive of those concerns. He argues that precise, robot-led operations could reduce civilian casualties. His near-term goal is more modest: the Phantom MK2, the next version of the robot, will be the first model to be both waterproof and dustproof.

One honest takeaway: Before deciding how seriously to take any humanoid company's military claims, ask whether the government contracts they cite are new wins or inherited from earlier firms. The answer tells you a lot.