Is Former Synapse CEO Already Moving on With a Robotics Startup?

To paraphrase a famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, there are no second acts in life.

The Gatsby scribe had never met a tech CEO. The business landscape is populated with stories of reinvention, and in some cases, with business leaders who — for lack of a better phrase — “keep on truckin’” and leave failed, or failing, companies behind while boldly moving onto something else.

News came Thursday (June 13), through a variety of media outlets including CNBC, that Foundation Robotics Labs is in the process of raising funds for a reported $11 million seed round. And it’s worth noting that the robotics startup counts as a co-founder none other than Synapse’s former CEO Sankaet Pathak. The startup’s seemingly all of two months old, and we note that there already seems to be some controversy around the funding activities.

Controversies Over Funding and Commitments

CNBC reports that as it seeks to raise the last $1 million of the $11 million funding, Foundation Robotics has claimed (to would-be investors) that it would be on the receiving end of an investment from General Motors. The auto giant was also reportedly in the midst of a data collection pact with the robotics firm and had supposedly committed a $300 million order… all of which has now been publicly denied by GM.

“GM has never invested in Foundation Robotics and has no plans to do so,” a GM spokesman told CNBC. “In fact, GM has never had an agreement of any kind with the company. Any claims to the contrary are fabricated.”

Pathak is of course the same executive who this week weighed in at a creditor hearing that Synapse may have commingled funds — end user funds, FinTech partner funds and Synapse’s own operating monies — in accounts held with Evolve. As we reported this week, it can be tough to sort out the commingled holdings to determine who owns what … and by extension, how, when and whether an $85 million shortfall in end users’ holdings will be recovered and restored to their rightful owners.

It remains to be seen what happens with either firm — Synapse, which may impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of FinTech customers, or Foundation Robotics. As the latter firm launched this year — well after Synapse began laying off staff late last year after losing one of its largest clients, Mercury — the read across is that Pathak is looking toward what’s next.

And there’s an echo here. Just last month, as noted in this space, WeWork has been moving through bankruptcy and its co-founder Adam Neumann, previously ousted from the firm, has given up an attempt to buy the firm for about $650 million (after it had been valued in its heyday for tens of billions of dollars). Three years after leaving WeWork, Neumann launched Flow in 2022, a real estate venture focused on residential living, and complete with digital wallets.

CEO and co-founders often are likened to visionaries — known for taking risks where others may not dare to tread. Reinvention is part of the lore. For Synapse, and for Pathak, the next chapter looms.