Builder.ai was a buzzy artificial intelligence company with a media-savvy chief executive, prestigious investors on three continents, a partnership with Microsoft and a supposedly vibrant business making apps for small businesses.

Two years ago, Fast Company magazine ranked Builder the third most innovative company in A.I., right behind OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind.

Last winter, it all went south. Builder’s board discovered that sales had been significantly overstated. The chief executive resigned. Within a few months, Builder, which was based in London and had operations in India and California, went from a $1.5 billion unicorn to bankruptcy. It is now being liquidated in a Delaware court.

“Builder should be a warning sign for investors, for employees, for executives,” said Manpreet Ratia, who was brought in as chief executive in March to try to salvage the company. “Be careful of what you claim you are. At some point, it catches up with you.”

Thanks to the dream of artificial intelligence, Silicon Valley is experiencing its biggest boom ever. Companies are pushing the technology as the savior of humanity. It will be your boss, your employee, your teacher, your best friend, your therapist. The tech community is stoked with an urgency bordering on panic. If the world is utterly changing right at this moment, there’s not a moment to lose.

Builder’s collapse has gone largely unnoticed amid the frenzy. It is the biggest A.I. company to crater, although whether it should have been called an A.I. company at all is up for debate. Artificial intelligence is an ambiguous term. Attaching the A.I. label to a start-up can involve a considerable degree of hope and presumption, and sometimes outright deception.