Binance France chief brushed off concerns days before police visit
Changpeng Zhao, founder and chief executive officer of Binance, waves as he arrives on stage for a panel session on the second day at the Vivatech Conference in Paris, France, on Thursday, June 16, 2022. The conference, also known as VivaTech, runs though to June 18. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
PARIS — Days before French police visited Binance’s Paris office, the crypto exchange’s top French executive dismissed concerns about U.S. regulatory charges impacting Binance’s other operations, comparing them to the flapping of a butterfly’s wings.
French prosecutors have opened a probe into “aggravated money-laundering” by the crypto exchange, Le Monde reported Friday, adding in a statement that the company was also being probed over operating an unauthorized exchange.
Just days before the raid, CNBC asked Binance France president David Prinçay if he was concerned about charges from the top two U.S. financial regulators against the exchange.
“I don’t care what happened in the U.S.,” Prinçay retorted, speaking at the Proof of Talk summit in Paris. “We are in Europe, with a French regulator, a European regulator.”
Prinçay insisted that Binance.US assets were separated from the international exchange, an assertion also made by the exchange’s legal team. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged Binance last week with 13 securities charges, disagrees, arguing that Binance user funds are at “significant risk” of flight due to founder Changpeng Zhao’s alleged ownership of an interlocking set of Binance-related companies.
Binance France’s chief called the U.S. allegations of commingling a “car crash.”
“The only concerns I have right now is that we look too much at the car crash and not to drive,” Prinçay said.
Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, dismissed the police statement and reporting as “FUD,” claiming it was a “surprise on-site” inspection that was “the norm.”
“We will not comment on the specifics of law enforcement or regulatory investigations except to say that information about our users is held securely and only provided to government officials upon receipt of documented appropriate justification,” the exchange said in another statement.
Prinçay did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the police visit.
Binance faces over a dozen charges from the SEC and a similar slate of allegations from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. A reported Department of Justice probe is also ongoing into the exchange, according to an SEC complaint.
Technology
Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’
Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.
Figure AI
Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”
Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”
The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”
The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.
Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.
The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.
Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.
Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.
The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.
Read the filing here:
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