Xiaodi Hou, the co-founder and former CEO of self-driving truck startup TuSimple, is demanding that the board immediately liquidate the company and return all remaining funds — roughly $450 million — to shareholders “on a pure pro-rata basis, regardless of share class,” according to a letter that TechCrunch has viewed.
Hou is also suing TuSimple and his former co-founder Mo Chen, the company’s chief producer and director, to confirm that a 2022 voting agreement granting Chen control over TuSimple expired in November 2024, which Hou says would revert his voting rights back to him.
Hou has even created a website, SaveTuSimple.com, to raise awareness about his campaign to liquidate TuSimple and return cash to shareholders — which include Traton Group, BlackRock, and Vanguard. The site states that as of November 26, TuSimple’s stock trades at $0.24 per share, while holding $1.93 per share in cash alone. It advertises that through liquidation, TuSimple shareholders “can immediately realize this 700%+ premium to current market price.”
The letter, lawsuit, and campaign are the latest flare-ups in an ongoing fight between TuSimple and some of its shareholders, which include Hou, over the company’s attempts to send its remaining assets to China. Before shuttering its U.S. operations and delisting from the stock market earlier this year, TuSimple was a pre-revenue company, so any cash it has today would have come from investors.
Hou and other shareholders have accused TuSimple’s leaders of diverting assets toward animation and gaming businesses linked to Chen, framing it as a business pivot. After shareholders raised concerns of self-dealing in an August letter to the board, TuSimple surprised many by unveiling a new AI-generated animation and gaming unit.
Earlier this month, Hou urged a California district court to issue a temporary restraining order on TuSimple to stop the company from transferring U.S. assets to China as part of an existing shareholder lawsuit. Hou said he was galvanized to action after noticing filings that he says signaled TuSimple was preparing to transfer large sums of money to China.
TuSimple has fought back against Hou, bringing up its own litigation alleging trade secrets theft after Hou launched his autonomous trucking startup, Bot Auto, in Texas last month.
“As a founder who invested seven years building TuSimple Holdings Inc. and its largest shareholder, it has been disappointing to watch shareholders’ collective investment value plummet by over 91% in less than two years under the leadership of Mo Chen … and Chairman and CEO Cheng Lu,” Hou wrote in the letter, which he sent to the board on Monday.
Hou filed suit against TuSimple and Chen last week in the Delaware Chancery Court, which is known to be friendly to shareholder rights. In the filing, he also asked the court to postpone TuSimple’s upcoming annual shareholder meeting, which is currently scheduled for December 20, to “prevent the implementation of proposed significant governance changes before the voting rights dispute is resolved.”
Sources familiar with the matter say Hou wants time to solicit proxies to get more investors on his side.
Aside from Hou and Chen, TuSimple’s largest shareholder, with an 11.8% stake, is Sun Dream, an affiliate of Chinese conglomerate Sina Corporation, an investment that brought scrutiny from federal regulators.
The remaining large shareholders are Logistics giant Traton (7.6% stake