A major scandal has erupted around the tech startup Hayden AI in the United States: the company has filed a lawsuit against its former CEO Chris Carson, who, according to the firm, secured his position through a falsified resume and committed a series of serious frauds.
This is reported by Finway
Falsification of Experience and Illegal Stock Sales
Hayden AI, headquartered in San Francisco, specializes in developing spatial analytics and computer vision systems for urban services and transportation infrastructure monitoring. In 2024, the company was valued at approximately $350 million, and Chris Carson left his leadership position following a large-scale investigation.
The lawsuit emphasizes that Carson presented a “meticulously fabricated fraud” in his professional biography. He allegedly lied about his military service and involvement in the founding of several companies, and falsely claimed to hold a PhD from Waseda University in Tokyo, which he did not actually possess.
“In his resume and LinkedIn profile, it was claimed that he earned a PhD from Waseda University in Tokyo in 2007. According to Hayden AI, this is false, and Carson does not hold a doctoral degree from this or any other university.”
Concerns about the authenticity of the information in Carson’s documents arose among Hayden AI employees in early 2024. According to the company, at that time he secretly sold shares of the startup worth over $1.2 million without the approval of the board of directors. The proceeds, the plaintiffs claim, were directed towards the purchase of luxury real estate in Florida and luxury items, including a Bentley Continental car with gold trim.
Theft of Corporate Data and Launching a Competitor
After Carson’s fraud was uncovered in the summer of 2024, he was stripped of his authority to make strategic decisions within the company. During this time, according to Hayden AI, he approached one of the employees with a request to download an email archive, which resulted in approximately 41 GB of official correspondence and internal documentation being copied to a USB drive.
On September 10, 2024, Carson was officially fired. However, the investigation revealed that just a few days prior, he had registered the domain echotwin.ai, after which he launched his own startup EchoTwin AI. According to Hayden AI, Carson’s new company became a direct competitor and is based on corporate data that was illegally copied from his previous workplace.
In its lawsuit, Hayden AI demands that Chris Carson return or destroy all stolen data. At the time of this report, Carson had not publicly commented on the allegations against him.
Information about Hayden AI products. Data: Hayden AI.
Information about Carson’s work experience. Data: LinkedIn.