{"id":169627,"date":"2023-08-13T16:23:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T21:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/stability-ai-cofounder-sold-stake-now-worth-over-500m-for-100-after-being-duped-says-lawsuit"},"modified":"2023-08-13T16:23:52","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T21:23:52","slug":"stability-ai-cofounder-sold-stake-now-worth-over-500m-for-100-after-being-duped-says-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/stability-ai-cofounder-sold-stake-now-worth-over-500m-for-100-after-being-duped-says-lawsuit","title":{"rendered":"Stability AI cofounder sold stake now worth over $500M for $100\u2014after being duped, says lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/stability-ai-cofounder-sold-stake-now-worth-over-500m-for-100-after-being-duped-says-lawsuit.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cyrus Hodes alleges that CEO Emad Mostaque deceived him into selling his 15% stake for $100\u2014three months before the startup reached a $1 billion valuation. His stake would be worth over $500 million now.<\/p>\n<p>Mostaque convinced Hodes \u201cthat the company he had helped build was essentially worthless,\u201d leading him to sell his shares to him in October 2021 and May 2022, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/s3.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23873690\/2c08f586-1e20-4303-8536-13ba3940c4e9.pdf https:\/\/s3.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23873690\/2c08f586-1e20-4303-8536-13ba3940c4e9.pdf\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" class=\"\">complaint filed<\/a> in San Francisco federal court on July 13.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut just a few months later, in August 2022, the company engaged in a seed funding round in which venture capital firms invested $101 million at a post-money valuation of $1 billion,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cMore recently, the company has been in the marketplace seeking funding at a valuation of $4 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cyrus Hodes alleges that CEO Emad Mostaque deceived him into selling his 15% stake for $100\u2014three months before the startup reached a $1 billion valuation. His stake would be worth over $500 million now. Mostaque convinced Hodes \u201cthat the company he had helped build was essentially worthless,\u201d leading him to sell his shares to him [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}