Autopilot investments — where your money goes

This page explains, plainly, what happens to money you put into Kiosk-X Autopilot: how funded capital becomes machines, what the platform charges, how long every step takes, what can go wrong, and how you get money back. No hype — the risk section is as real as the feature list.

Two ways to put capital to work

1. Buy machines outright — pick a HotBox model (Air $3,000 / Pro $5,000 / Pro Max $7,000), pay full price by card (Stripe). The machine is yours; it never pays a maintenance fee. Refundable any time until it ships.
2. Invest any amount ($50–$250,000) — your money lands in your own managed pool (never mixed with anyone else's). Each time your pool balance crosses the price of your target model, the platform funds one fully-managed machine from it and runs the whole placement pipeline for you. Whatever doesn't yet cover a machine stays visible in your console as capital awaiting allocation — it is never absorbed, rounded away, or converted into a fraction of somebody else's machine.

What the platform charges (all of it)

The maintenance fee is computed from the same numbers your securities view shows — revenue net of sales refunds, profit = revenue − costs — and it appears as its own itemized cost line (maintenanceFeeUsd). If a machine is underwater (costs exceed revenue), the profit component is $0; only the revenue component applies. You can re-derive the fee yourself from your P&L lines; if you ever can't, that's a support ticket we take seriously (fee disputes have a formal queue on our side).

From dollars to a live machine: the timeline

Once a machine is funded (bought or pool-funded) and paid, the platform places the order with the manufacturer, and your deal page shows a live stage tracker — each stage with its expected date, set once at order placement, and the actual date when it happens. Delays show as expected-vs-actual; we never quietly re-plan the ETA.

These are typical calendar-day estimates, not guarantees — customs holds, factory backlogs and venue scheduling all happen, and when they do you see the delay on the tracker, stage by stage.

Location work (shortlist → outreach → lease signature) runs in parallel and has its own clock: some venues sign in a week; some searches take six. A machine can be delivered before its lease is signed — it then waits, visibly, at "delivered".

What can go wrong (and what happens then)

• No venue found — if placement hasn't converged after ~6 weeks we contact you with options: change the target area, pause, or start the refund process for that machine's capital.
• Lease falls through after the machine is funded — the machine goes back into placement with a fresh venue search; the tracker restarts the location stages honestly. Your capital stays attached to that machine.
• Manufacturer delay — the stage tracker shows the slip; delays past our thresholds open a case on our operations desk automatically.
• Machine dead on arrival — replacement is dispatched under warranty; the original tracker keeps the record of what happened.
• You want out — see refunds below.

Refunds and withdrawals

• Unallocated pool capital (money that hasn't funded a machine yet): refundable on request, in full, to your original payment method. This is a human-reviewed operation on our side (fraud protection), typically 1–3 business days.
• A funded machine, before it ships: refundable — same policy as outright purchases ("refundable until shipped").
• A funded machine, after it ships: no longer cash-refundable; support works with you on re-placement or resale.
• Chargebacks: disputing a payment freezes the related pool position until the dispute resolves — please talk to support first; it's faster for everyone.

Risk disclosure (read this)

• Vending revenue is not guaranteed. We make no earnings claims and no income projections — if anyone selling you a vending "opportunity" does, walk away (the FTC has repeatedly shut down done-for-you vending schemes built on inflated earnings claims). Real machines at real venues can and sometimes do lose money after costs.
• Your capital is committed, not deposited. A managed pool is not a bank account, not insured, and not interest-bearing. Between funding and machine allocation your money sits as a prepayment for equipment and services, refundable per the policy above.
• Timelines are estimates. Manufacturing, freight, customs and venue negotiations all carry real-world variance; the tracker shows you the truth rather than promising a date we can't control.
• Fees reduce returns. The 2% maintenance fee on revenue and profit is charged on pool-funded machines even in months where your net after all costs is negative (the revenue component still applies when revenue > 0).
• Every machine and every dollar is itemized — per-machine revenue, refunds, cost lines, fees, and your pool ledger are all visible in the console and the app. If a number doesn't reconcile, contact support; the platform keeps an audit trail of every money movement.

Where to see all of this

• Web console → Autopilot → your portfolio, per-machine P&L, pool balance and each deal's stage tracker.
• Operator X app → Money tab → the same securities view; each deal's detail screen shows the manufacturer timeline.
• API — everything on this page is a public, documented endpoint: GET /api/v1/dfy/fleets (pool + investments), GET /api/v1/dfy/portfolio/securities (P&L incl. the itemized fee), GET /api/v1/dfy/deals/{dealId}/manufacturing (the stage tracker).