Varun Vummadi, CEO of San Francisco-based AI startup Giga, announced a $3 million cryptocurrency extortion threat. Unknown criminals stole confidential data and demanded payment to avoid releasing false and damaging information. Vummadi posted on X, “They have already posted information on Twitter that is false and defamatory, and now they are threatening to take snippets of this data, manipulate it out of context, and release it to the public with wildly false and defamatory allegations unless we wire $3M to an anonymous crypto account.” Some questioned why Giga had vulnerable data. Earlier, former employees including Jared Steele accused Giga of unethical acts like faking revenue, bribery, and poor work conditions. Steele described the work climate as the “most toxic” and quit after one day due to 12-hour shifts and broken promises. Vummadi denied all charges as “wildly false and defamatory,” blaming manipulated data for the accusations after Giga’s $61 million Series A funding round in November 2025. Founded in 2023 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Vummadi and Esha Manideep, Giga builds voice-based AI agents. Both founders sacrificed lucrative offers: Manideep refused a $150,000 job and Vummadi gave up a Stanford PhD and a $525,000 quant trader position to launch the startup.