The corporate espionage saga between HR platforms Rippling and Deel has captured the imagination of Silicon Valley — and now, the plot has ensnared additional companies.
Toku, an HR compliance startup for cryptocurrency companies, has accused Deel of exploiting its trade secrets and trying to install spies — including none other than Rippling mole Keith O’Brien — among its ranks.
In a brief filed April 22 in the Delaware Court of Chancery, Toku alleges that Deel and Liquifi, a competitor that helps companies manage token-based compensation, colluded to “kill Toku” by encouraging its former head of legal, Benjamin Snipes, to copy hundreds of documents and move them to Liquifi, which he joined in late 2024.
“We love fair competition, but this underhanded behavior is totally out of place in crypto, Silicon Valley, and HR/compliance software,” Toku cofounder Dominika Stobiecka wrote on X.
The suit claims that Deel hatched the spying plot because it did not have a crypto-native tax service to compete with that of Toku. Deel and Liquifi teamed up in early 2024 to build a competitor, but their efforts failed until Snipes joined Liquifi later that year, according to the filing.
“Liquifi turned Snipes’ betrayal into the business model,” the lawsuit alleges. Toku claims Snipes downloaded 25,000 internal documents, and at least 500, including proprietary information and customer lists, were copied and moved to Liquifi.
A Liquifi executive wrote in a memo last year that Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz “feels this partnership is a great opportunity for them to crush Toku” and “wants to kill Toku more than see lots of revenue.”
Liquifi had a working version of a Toku competitor integrated into Deel’s platform early this year.
Toku in December filed a lawsuit against Liquifi and Snipes that did not include Deel. Last week’s updated briefing does not name Deel as a defendant but accuses the company of benefiting from Liquifi and Snipes’ actions. Deel’s actions, the briefing says, have “sinister” echoes of Deel’s espionage efforts against its competitor Rippling.
Liquifi CEO Robin Ji cited the court’s denial of a preliminary injunction requested by Toku as evidence of his startup’s ability to win the case.
“Liquifi has always stood for fair competition and innovation over litigation,” Ji said in a statement. “The court has now seen through Toku’s storytelling and we are pleased to move forward and stay focused on our product, customers, and partners.”
Snipes did not respond to a request for comment.
A Deel spokesperson said they could not comment on a lawsuit involving other companies but noted that it is standard industry practice to work with vendors to provide complementary services.
“Liquifi has many other partners,” the Deel spokesperson said in a statement. “This is clearly an attempt to attach a months-old lawsuit to a completely unrelated news cycle.”
The spokesperson also pointed out that the law firm representing Toku in this case is also representing Rippling in their litigation against Deel.
Last month, Rippling accused Deel of placing O’Brien within its ranks and orchestrating a long-running theft of company secrets. In an affidavit, O’Brien admitted that Bouaziz directly recruited him to spy on Rippling, paying him 5,000 euros a month for the service.
The lawsuit claims that O’Brien applied for four roles at Toku between November 2023 and September 2024, and at least three other Deel employees have interviewed for positions, “which Toku suspects were efforts to glean confidential business insights.”