Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund has been accused of deliberately “destroying” a social media company it once valued at more than $1 billion to protect its image, the Financial Times reported.
The tech investment giant allegedly invented a “flagrant, outrageous lie” that the app – IRL – was almost entirely populated by bots to give it an excuse to close the struggling start-up down in June, the report went on.
The claim was made in a lawsuit filed by IRL, which saw $150m of investment from SoftBank, on Wednesday. SoftBank is already suing IRL’s former chief executive Abraham Shafi claiming he had lied about the app’s user base.
Read the full story: The Financial Times
- By Sean O’Meara
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