AI Shopping App Founder Charged with Defrauding Investors: The Nate Saga
2025-04-11
Albert Saniger, founder of the AI shopping app Nate, has been charged with defrauding investors of over $50 million. Nate claimed its app used AI for one-click purchases across e-commerce sites, but in reality, relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in the Philippines to manually complete transactions. Investigations revealed Nate's automation rate was effectively 0%, exposing the company's exaggeration of its AI capabilities during fundraising. Nate subsequently went bankrupt, leaving investors with near-total losses. This case highlights the issue of startups overhyping their AI capabilities.