A former SandboxAQ executive filed a wrongful termination lawsuit last month containing scandalous allegations against the company’s famed CEO, Jack Hidary. The plaintiff himself redacted the most salacious details. On Friday, the company’s lawyers filed a blistering response, calling the former employee a “serial liar” and stating his lawsuit asserts false claims for improper and extortionate purposes.
Even the visible portions of the lawsuit contain eyebrow-raising allegations, should a court find them valid. The case offers a rare inside look at how employee lawsuits can become a public airing of dirty laundry from otherwise opaque internal happenings, thanks to the ubiquitous private arbitration clauses in Silicon Valley employee agreements.
The suit was filed by Robert Bender in mid-December. Bender worked as Chief of Staff to Hidary from August 2024 through July 2025, according to the complaint. He contends he was wrongfully terminated after raising concerns about a number of alleged incidents. Some of these, he said, involved sexual encounters, while others, he claims, involved misleading financial information presented to investors.
SandboxAQ vehemently denies the allegations. The company’s lawyer, Orin Snyder, a well-known partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn, stated the case is a complete fabrication. He said the company looks forward to debunking these baseless allegations and exposing the lawsuit as an opportunistic and extortionate abuse of the judicial process.
What makes the case particularly notable is the number of Silicon Valley heavy hitters involved in SandboxAQ. The company is an AI and quantum computing startup that began as a moonshot unit of Google parent company Alphabet, led at Google by Hidary. Hidary is also well-known in Silicon Valley as a longtime X Prize board member.
SandboxAQ was spun out of Alphabet into an independent company in March 2022 with Hidary as CEO. It soon attracted big-name investors, including billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who invested and became the startup’s chairman. Other billionaire investors include Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, venture capitalist Jim Breyer, and Bridgewater hedge fund founder Ray Dalio.
Bender’s attorneys say the redacted sections describe sexual encounters and the physical condition of non-party individuals observed by the plaintiff during business travel. This is an unusual move, as typically the party being sued requests redactions, not the person making the allegations.
Various explanations exist for such a tactic. Generally speaking, the possibilities range from protecting innocent third parties who aren’t accused of wrongdoing, to a shakedown strategy signaling that more damaging details could emerge if the defendants don’t offer an acceptable settlement.
The unredacted portion of the suit provides a few more general details of the allegations that were hidden. Bender is alleging that Hidary used company resources and investor funds to solicit, transport, and entertain female companions. In an attached exhibit of a text message from Bender, he mentions prostitutes.
Bender further alleges in his suit that Hidary sold tens of millions of dollars worth of his stock at a premium price based on what Bender says were misleading figures presented to potential investors. He contends that revenue figures presented to the board were fifty percent lower than the figures shown in presentations to prospective investors.
SandboxAQ’s lawyers vigorously contest all of the above. They state the company did not make fraudulent disclosures to investors regarding its tender offer or otherwise, and that the CEO did not misuse corporate assets. They claim the plaintiff invented these inflammatory allegations to manufacture statutory claims and to insulate himself from the consequences of his own misconduct.
Bender, for his part, alleges that the company has been trying to smear him. His complaint asserts that he brought his lawsuit only because his termination was followed by a malicious scorched earth campaign to destroy his reputation.
While the validity of any of these allegations is for a jury to decide, many of his claims echo an investigative report on SandboxAQ published by The Information in July. Sources told The Information that Hidary was using company resources to fly women he was dating on corporate jets, and that the company’s revenues were far below its projections. Bender references The Information story in his lawsuit but denies he was a source for it. SandboxAQ claims he was a source and is lying about his involvement.
Despite any controversies, big-name investors were eager to invest in the company last year. In April, SandboxAQ raised over four hundred fifty million dollars in a Series E funding round from investors including Ray Dalio, Horizon Kinetics, BNP Paribas, Google, and Nvidia. SandboxAQ also announced a ninety million dollar secondary sale. The company states it has raised one billion dollars total and is valued at five point seven five billion dollars according to PitchBook estimates.