A lately unsealed court docket submitting has revealed that Meta has sued a former senior worker for “openly disloyal and dishonest conduct” whereas leaving Meta for an AI information startup referred to as Omniva that The Info has described as “mysterious.”
In keeping with Meta, its former vice chairman of infrastructure, Dipinder Singh Khurana (also called T.S.), allegedly used his entry to “confidential, personal, and extremely delicate” info to steal greater than 100 inside paperwork in a rushed scheme to poach Meta workers and borrow Meta’s enterprise plans to hurry up Omniva’s negotiations with key Meta suppliers.
Meta believes that Omniva—which Information Middle Dynamics (DCD) reported lately “pivoted from crypto to AI cloud”—is “in search of to offer AI cloud computing companies at scale, together with by designing and developing information facilities.” However it was held again by a “lack of information heart experience on the prime,” DCD reported.
The Info reported that Omniva started hiring Meta workers to fill the gaps on this experience, together with wooing Khurana away from Meta.
Final yr, Khurana notified Meta that he was leaving on Might 15, and that is when Meta first noticed Khurana’s allegedly “utter disregard for his contractual and authorized obligations to Meta—together with his confidentiality obligations to Meta set forth within the Confidential Info and Invention Project Settlement that Khurana signed when becoming a member of Meta.”
A Meta investigation discovered that in Khurana’s final two weeks on the firm, he allegedly uploaded confidential Meta paperwork—together with “details about Meta’s ‘High Expertise,’ efficiency info for tons of of Meta workers, and detailed worker compensation info”—on Meta’s community to a Dropbox folder labeled together with his new employer’s title.
“Khurana additionally uploaded a number of of Meta’s proprietary, extremely delicate, confidential, and personal contracts with enterprise companions who provide Meta with essential parts for its information facilities,” Meta alleged. “And different paperwork adopted.”
Along with pulling paperwork, Khurana additionally allegedly despatched “pressing” requests to subordinates for confidential info on a key provider, together with Meta’s pricing settlement “for sure computing {hardware}.”
“Unaware of Khurana’s plans, the worker supplied Khurana with, amongst different issues, Meta’s pricing-form settlement with that provider for the computing {hardware} and the provider’s Meta-specific preliminary pricing for a specific chip,” Meta alleged.
A few of these paperwork have been “expressly marked confidential,” Meta alleged. These embrace a three-year marketing strategy and PowerPoints relating to “Meta’s future ‘roadmap’ with a key provider” and “Meta’s 2022 redesign of its global-supply-chain group” that Meta alleged “would immediately support Khurana in constructing his personal environment friendly and efficient supply-chain group” and afford a path for Omniva to bypass “years of funding.” Khurana additionally allegedly “uploaded a PowerPoint discussing Meta’s use of GPUs for synthetic intelligence.”
Meta was apparently tipped off to this alleged betrayal when Khurana used his Meta e-mail and community entry to finish a writing project for Omniva as a part of his hiring course of. For this writing project, Khurana “disclosed personal details about Meta’s relationship with sure suppliers that it makes use of for its information facilities” when requested to “clarify how he would assist his potential new employer develop the availability chain for a corporation constructing information facilities utilizing particular applied sciences.”
In a seeming try and cowl up the alleged theft of Meta paperwork, Khurana apparently “tried to clean” one doc “of its references to Meta,” in addition to eradicating a label marking it “CONFIDENTIAL—FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY.” However when changing “Meta” with “X,” Khurana allegedly missed the time period “Meta” in “at the very least 5 areas.”
“Khurana took such motion to try to profit himself or his new employer, together with to assist be sure that Khurana would proceed to work at his new employer, proceed to obtain vital compensation from his new employer, and/or to allow Khurana to take shortcuts in constructing his supply-chain group at his new employer and/or serving to to construct his new employer’s enterprise,” Meta alleged.
Ars couldn’t instantly attain Khurana for remark. Meta famous that he has repeatedly denied breaching his contract or initiating contact with Meta workers who later joined Omniva. He additionally allegedly refused to signal a termination settlement that reiterates his confidentiality obligations.
