Gun-shooting humanoid robots fighting on the front lines are becoming less of a dystopian fantasy.

Robot startup Foundation Future Industries recently inked a $24 million deal with the Pentagon and has begun tests in Ukraine with its robots, which can inspect and transport weapons.

The two-year-old company is among a number of startups trying to build robot armies with the Pentagon. Scout AI emerged last year, and the US military is also testing quadrupeds, or robot dogs, for reconnaissance missions.

Foundation is training robots to survey enemy territory and plans to move into front-line deployments, where civilians are out of reach. “We want to be able to validate this year and scale next year,” founder Sankaet Pathak told Semafor.

Pathak also has something to prove. His previous startup, Synapse, which offered banking services, filed for bankruptcy in 2024, with creditors and users still fighting for millions of dollars in funds.