A startup with Eric Trump as adviser is testing humanoid robots in Ukraine. It wants them on US front lines within 18 months.

Foundation Future Industries, a San Francisco startup founded in 2024, sent two of its Phantom MK-1 humanoid robots to Ukraine earlier this year. The company described it as the first known deployment of humanoid robots in a combat theatre. The tests, backed by the US government and conducted with Ukrainian officials, focused on logistics in hazardous areas.

CEO Sankaet Pathak told CNBC the MK-1 testing proved the robots can perform supply pickups that currently expose soldiers to danger. The robots carry approximately 44 pounds. They lack waterproofing and sufficient battery life for sustained deployment.

Foundation plans to send improved Phantom 2 units to Ukraine this year. Pathak says they will have “superhuman abilities” and double the payload capacity. The company is targeting front-line deployment with the US military within 12 to 18 months.

The political dimension is unavoidable. Eric Trump, the second son of the sitting president, recently joined Foundation as chief strategy adviser. The company has received $24 million in government research contracts across the Army, Navy, and Air Force for feasibility testing in inspection, logistics, and weapons handling.

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Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren alleged the contracts were “corruption in plain sight.” A Foundation spokesperson told CNBC that Eric Trump had been an investor before becoming an adviser. The two parties share a vision of bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Pathak is best known for leading Synapse, a fintech platform that declared bankruptcy in 2024. Foundation also attracted scrutiny after suggesting it had close ties to General Motors, claims GM subsequently rejected. The company’s credibility is a live question.

The military argument for humanoid robots centres on urban combat environments. “Modern urban combat spaces, where there are stairwells, ladders, basements and narrow corridors, were created for human movement,” said Kateryna Bondar, senior fellow at CSIS. Humanoid systems could have advantages over tracked or quadruped robots in these scenarios.

The counterargument is cost and complexity. “Making robots look like humans is a complex and expensive engineering challenge,” said Melanie Sisson at the Brookings Foreign Policy program. “What Ukraine has taught us is the opposite, that we need the ability to adapt rapidly and manufacture quickly and cheaply.”

Ukraine’s war has already become the primary testing ground for AI and robotics in combat. Ground robots deliver supplies to front lines. Autonomous drones conduct precision strikes. The conflict is generating operational data that peacetime testing cannot replicate.

The European defence-tech sector is moving faster on autonomous strike systems. Berlin’s Stark is raising €300 million at a €2.5 billion valuation for kamikaze drones. Destinus manufactures 2,000 cruise missiles annually through a Rheinmetall joint venture. These companies build purpose-designed weapons. Foundation is trying to make a humanoid do the same job.

Pathak said some weaponised uses of the Phantom robots will retain human confirmation in the decision loop. In certain time-critical scenarios, the robots will need to make fully autonomous decisions. The ethical implications of autonomous lethal decision-making remain unresolved internationally.

Foundation’s ambitions are large. Pathak plans to scale production to thousands of units this year. The goal is to deliver “the best robots we can build” to the US military, “better than anything China has.” China has its own leading humanoid companies and has publicly funded military robotics initiatives, though the extent of its trials remains unclear.

The broader humanoid market is splitting into clear use cases. 1X ships home robots at $20,000. Colin Angle is building companion robots with bear cub ears. Foundation is building robots that carry supplies through artillery fire. The technology is the same. The applications could not be more different.

Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute, expects tracked, flying, and underwater robots to replace human forces before humanoids do. “It might be a science fiction trope to expect humanoid terminator-style robots,” he said. The age of AI robots in war is near. Whether they need to look human to fight is the question Foundation is spending $24 million in government contracts to answer.