By RWT Robotics Editorial Team Published
RUMOR
Foundation Future Industries, the humanoid robot maker backed by Eric Trump, is in talks to supply humanoid robots to Israel’s military, including for use in Hamas tunnels in Gaza, according to the Financial Times and The Telegraph. No deal has been announced, and Israel’s Defense Ministry declined to comment. The engineering question is whether a humanoid can do that work at all, and so far nobody has shown that it can.
What we know
Some of this is on the record and some is not, so here is the line between them.
According to Wired and CNBC coverage of the company’s statements, Eric Trump is an investor in Foundation Future Industries and serves as its chief strategic adviser. The same coverage reports that Foundation says it plans to arm its humanoid robots and hopes to begin US military testing within 12 to 18 months. Those are the company’s stated plans, not a record of anything delivered.
CNBC reports that Foundation sent two Phantom MK-1 humanoids to Ukraine for pilot demonstrations. Foundation describes this as the first use of humanoids in an active combat theater. That framing is the company’s own. We found no independent confirmation of how autonomous those robots were, how they were used, or what they actually did once they arrived. “Sent to a war zone” and “operated in combat” are very different claims.
Foundation was founded in 2024 and is building the Phantom humanoid for industrial and defense use. That makes it a two-year-old company now pitching hardware for some of the hardest operating environments that exist.
One earlier headline does not hold up. Fox Business reported that Foundation had won a $24 million Pentagon contract. WIRED looked into it, concluded that Foundation had not independently secured any military contracts, and called the $24 million figure “fuzzy.” Treat that number as debunked.
What is rumored
The Financial Times, followed by The Telegraph, reports that Foundation is in talks with the Israel Defense Forces to supply Phantom MK-1 humanoids for use in Hamas tunnels in Gaza and possibly for combat. Both are major outlets with strong track records. We could not access the original FT or Telegraph articles, so these details come through secondary coverage, including a Yahoo-syndicated Telegraph story and Clash Report.
Per that coverage, reported figures include up to 1,000 robots. Co-founder Mike LeBlanc reportedly said he is talking directly with the IDF chief of staff, held preliminary meetings in September, and inspected tunnels with a Phantom MK-1. LeBlanc is on record, but he is also an interested party with every reason to talk up a deal. Neither the IDF nor Israel’s Defense Ministry has confirmed the talks, and no deal has been closed.
The same reporting carries two denials. LeBlanc said Eric Trump’s involvement played no role in securing any contract. A spokesperson for Eric Trump says he has no role in management, operations, strategic decisions or government contracts. Both statements come from interested parties and have not been independently verified. They also sit awkwardly beside Wired and CNBC’s description of Eric Trump as the company’s chief strategic adviser.
What we don’t know yet
Whether any agreement exists. Talks are not contracts, and “up to 1,000” is a ceiling figure from secondary coverage, not an order.
What the robots would actually do. The reporting mentions tunnels and “possibly” combat. Those are different missions with different requirements, and nothing public tells us which one is on the table.
How autonomous the Phantom MK-1 is. The Ukraine deployment is the company’s main field credential, and its autonomy is unverified.
The money trail. Secondary coverage, citing the FT, says over $70 million in US military money has gone to Foundation and a company it acquired, including a contract signed after Eric Trump joined. We have not confirmed the date of that contract. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called the ties between the Trump family and Foundation “corruption in plain sight.” Separately, Al Jazeera reported on 2026-02-17 that Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. also back XTEND, an Israeli drone maker that is a separate company from Foundation.
What it means
Start with the angle that matters most to engineers: can a humanoid do tunnel work?
Nothing in the public record shows that it can. Foundation has published plans and a pilot claim. It has not, in any source we have, shown independent performance data from confined, hostile environments. LeBlanc reportedly says he walked a Phantom MK-1 through tunnels. A supervised inspection by the company’s own co-founder is a demo, not an evaluation.
Confined underground spaces are a brutal test for any mobile robot: tight clearances, poor footing, limited visibility, and the general difficulty of keeping a link to a remote operator once you are underground. A biped adds balance and fall recovery to that list. The usual argument for humanoids is that they fit spaces built for people. Tunnels dug for concealment are not built for comfortable human movement, so that argument is weaker here than it sounds.
Then there is autonomy. If a robot depends on a human operator over a radio link, its usefulness underground depends on that link holding. If it is meant to act on its own, the bar for evidence rises sharply, especially for a company that says it intends to arm its machines. On either path, the question is the same: what has been demonstrated, to whom, and under what conditions? Today the answer comes almost entirely from Foundation itself.
Foundation’s public footprint follows a pattern. The ambitions are large and specific: armed humanoids, US military testing within 18 months, combat-theater firsts, a reported fleet of up to 1,000. The verifiable record is thin: two robots sent to Ukraine with unknown autonomy, and a headline contract that WIRED could not stand up. That gap is the story.
None of this means the talks are not happening. The FT and The Telegraph are serious outlets, and LeBlanc is talking on the record. It means the reporting confirms that a conversation exists, not that the technology works. Until Israel confirms a deal, or someone outside the company publishes real performance data, the capability claims stay where they belong: in the company’s pitch deck.
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By RWT Robotics Editorial Team
- Published
