FTX lawyer calls this case ‘a different sort of animal’ in first bankruptcy hearing

Published

3 years ago

November 22, 2022

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Lawyers for collapsed crypto exchange FTX said on Tuesday, in the company’s first bankruptcy hearing, that regulators from the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered, have agreed to consolidate proceedings in Delaware.

FTX’s lawyers, who were brought in by new leadership to handle restructuring, filed an emergency motion last week to secure the move to the U.S. The hearing on Tuesday was the initial step in the resolution of the largest cryptocurrency bankruptcy on record.

“What we are dealing with is a different sort of animal,” said FTX counsel James Bromley. “Unfortunately, the FTX debtors were not particularly well run, and that is an understatement.”

Regarding FTX’s founder, this was an organization that was “effectively run as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried,” an FTX attorney told the court.

FTX lawyers confirmed earlier reports that the Southern District of New York’s Cyber Crimes unit has begun an investigation into the matter. FTX lawyers have also made reference to cyberattacks, suggesting there were multiple attacks beyond the $477 million hack that occurred shortly after the company entered bankruptcy on Nov. 11. In that attack, hackers extracted ether out of FTX wallets.

The central challenge for the new team is “working to bring order to disorder,” Bromley told the court. After introducing his fellow counsel, Bromley dove into what FTX has been doing to understand the complex morass of data and finances left behind by FTX and Bankman-Fried, who was replaced by restructuring expert John Ray III.

Bankman-Fried exercised a level of control over the business that “none of us have ever seen,” Bromley said, referring to the bankruptcy experts and attorneys the company has employed as part of the restucturing process.

FTX had been valued by private investors at $32 billion earlier this year, and Bankman-Fried was making himself out to be an industry savior during the crypto winter.

“The FTX situation is the latest and the largest failure in this space,” Bromley said. “There was effectively a run on the bank, both with respect to the international exchange […] as well as the U.S. exchange. At the same time that the run on the bank was occurring, there was a leadership crisis […] The FTX companies were controlled by a very small group of people, led by Mr. Sam-Bankman-Fried. During the run on the bank, Mr. Fried’s leadership frayed, and that led to resignations.”

FTX has just begun to implement “standard” risk and data management practices, he said. As part of the process, lawyers had earlier to approve roughly $1 million in salary expenses for existing FTX employees.

The process is designed to get as much as possible for creditors, Bromley said.

“It is essential that we first maximize the value of the assets we have, whether that means selling assets, selling businesses or restructuring businesses,” he said. “All of that is on the table.”

FTX customers had a global presence, but many were based in tax havens. The largest geographic areas represented included:

Cayman Islands — 22% of registered customers.
U.S. Virgin Islands — 11% of registered customers.
China — 8% of registered customers.

“We will be before you quite quickly with an attempt to sell certain of the business that we understand […] are self-sufficient and robust [with] interest from others,” Bromley added.

FTX lawyers said they’ve established four silos for the company’s assets and various entities. They are:

The WRS (West Realm Shires) silo, which controls and encompasses U.S. holdings.
The Alameda silo, which includes Alameda Research, Bankman Fried’s now defunct hedge fund.
The venture silo, which invested in crypto companies and startups.
The dot-com silo, which encompasses the international business, the bulk of FTX’s deposits.

Bromley said the asset recovery and protection efforts encompass not just crypto assets and currency, but “information.” The company has also brought on independent directors for the first time ever.

“A substantial amount of assets have either been stolen or missing,” Bromley said. “Additionally, “substantial funds appear to have been transfered from other silos to Alameda.”

A key aspect of the FTX crisis is around Alameda and the FTT token, a coin issued by FTX. Lawyers have walked through the history of FTX and affiliated companies, pointing at the creation of the FTT token in April 2019 and the foundation of the Alameda entities in November 2017.

Investments were made in the crypto and technology venture space, Bromley said, but almost $300 million was also spent on real estate in the Bahamas. That number is higher than previously reported, and Bromley said most of those purchases were home and vacation properties for senior executives.

Employees have left the company in droves. As of October 2022, the main FTX parent company had 330 employees around the world, with 127 in the U.S. Including the Australian businesses and FTX Digital Markets which had 190 employees, the global headcount was 520.

The best guess for the headcount now, according to FTX attorneys, is “around 260.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Technology

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Published

4 hours ago

July 11, 2025

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Technology

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Published

13 hours ago

July 11, 2025

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Published

15 hours ago

July 11, 2025

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.