A former high-ranking Meta executive is being sued by the tech giant over accusations he misappropriated a trove of confidential corporate information as he was exiting to join an AI startup competitor.
According to a complaint filed last month in California state court by Meta Platforms Inc., Dipinder Singh Khurana, known as TS Khurana, stands accused of egregious disloyalty before his departure from the company. Khurana had spent over a decade at Meta, rising to become Vice President of Infrastructure.
However, the lawsuit alleges that in the lead up to his resignation, Khurana blatantly disregarded contractual obligations. He is accused of uploading a vast number of Meta’s proprietary documents and data to personal cloud storage accounts like Google Drive and Dropbox.
The purportedly misappropriated documents contained highly sensitive information pertaining to Meta’s business operations, including employee compensation details, performance reviews, and confidential contract terms, as stated in the legal filing.
Compounding the alleged misconduct, at least eight Meta employees whose personal records were included in the data uploaded by Khurana subsequently left to join the executive at his new “stealth” AI cloud computing startup in 2023, according to Meta’s complaint.
A Meta representative condemned Khurana’s alleged actions as “egregious misconduct” demonstrating an “utter disregard” for contractual and legal responsibilities. The company vowed to “continue working to protect confidential business and employee information.”
Attempts by Bloomberg to obtain comment from Khurana regarding the lawsuit’s claims went unanswered at the time of publication.
While the legal proceedings remain ongoing, the accusations lambasted by Meta paint a picture of an outgoing executive potentially abusing access privileges to compromise corporate secrets for the benefit of a competitive business venture.
(Based on original reporting from Bloomberg)
