‘Want to set the record straight’: Giga CEO alleges $3 million extortion demand from ex-employees

San Francisco-based AI startup Giga has found itself at the centre of a growing controversy after its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Varun Vummadi alleged that the company is being blackmailed by a group seeking $3 million in cryptocurrency. 

Vummadi, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, took to social media to claim that a “small group of individuals” had illegally accessed confidential company information and was using it to extort money from the startup. He shared a screenshot of an email demanding payment in crypto, saying the matter had been reported to law enforcement. 

The allegations come at a sensitive time for Giga, which raised $61 million in Series A funding in November 2025, led by Redpoint Ventures. Founded in 2023 by Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep, the startup builds voice-based AI agents for enterprises and has been positioned as a fast-growing player in the generative AI ecosystem. 

Inside the extortion emails 

In a post on X (formally twitter), Vummadi shared details of the first extortion email received by Giga on December 13. The anonymous sender claimed their goal was to send both founders to jail and extract compensation worth “10 times the value of the equities they stole.” 

“The least painful scenario for you is returning what is rightfully ours, otherwise suffer,” the email warned, threatening a gradual public release of material from what it described as a “70 GB destruction stack.” 

Two days later, Jared publicly claimed to have received extensive internal data from ex-employees. On December 23, Giga received a second email from the same anonymous group, this time explicitly demanding $3 million. 

The email reportedly included step-by-step instructions for purchasing Bitcoin and converting it to Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It also advised the founders to sell personal equity and move funds into a personal account to facilitate the payment. 

Former employee’s claims go viral 

The extortion allegation surfaced amid a parallel storm on social media, triggered by a viral thread posted by a former Giga employee named Jared. In a series of posts on X (formally twitter), Jared accused the startup of multiple alleged malpractices, including overstating revenue, misleading employees about titles and compensation, and maintaining an unhealthy work culture with regular 12-hour workdays. 

He also claimed that one of the founders made an inappropriate remark referencing “chopping off a goat’s head in India for good luck.” 

On December 15, Jared escalated his claims, alleging that a group of former Giga employees and contractors had shared 70 GB of internal data with him. According to Jared, the data contains recordings and documents that purportedly show revenue falsification, bribery of Fortune 500 companies, improper hiring practices in Dubai, and cheating employees out of equity. 

Giga has strongly denied any wrongdoing. 

Company denies wrongdoing, alerts authorities 

In a statement issued on December 25, Giga categorically rejected the allegations made against it and framed the emails as a coordinated extortion attempt. 

“A small group of individuals has illegally obtained confidential company information and is now attempting to extort and blackmail Giga,” the company said. “They are threatening to take snippets of this data, manipulate it out of context, and release it to the public with wildly false and defamatory allegations unless we wire $3M to an anonymous crypto account.” 

Giga said it has informed law enforcement agencies and is prepared to pursue legal remedies. The company also pointed to the anonymous nature of the emails, which were sent from Proton Mail accounts, as evidence of extortion.