TuSimple co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou is on a war path in the lead up to Friday’s annual shareholder meeting that will decide the makeup of the company’s board of directors.
Over the past several weeks, Hou has sued TuSimple for control of his voting rights, demanded the company immediately liquidate and return all remaining cash to shareholders, and urged courts to block TuSimple’s ability to transfer funds to China.
Now, Hou is pushing shareholders to change the board, even if that means taking the fight outside the annual meeting. On Monday, Hou wrote an open letter to stockholders alerting them to his plans to launch a written consent process to remove the current board directors and replace them with ones who will support liquidation. This means that even if the six incumbent board directors are re-elected at the upcoming annual meeting, shareholders who want to see change will have the option to try again.
TuSimple, meanwhile, has asked shareholders ahead of the annual meeting to re-elect its existing directors as well as approve a plan to stagger the board. This second proposal, if approved, would block any future attempts at removing all board members at once.
TuSimple did not respond in time to TechCrunch to comment.
Hou is pushing for a written consent solicitation because it would allow shareholders to remove directors outside the annual meeting cycle with the support of a majority of the outstanding voting power, he argued in the letter.
TuSimple has been embroiled in drama since the autonomous trucking company went public in 2021. This latest chapter began after the startup shut down its U.S. operations and delisted from the stock market at the start of 2024. TuSimple said it planned to relaunch AV testing in China, but instead it parted ways with most of the self-driving team earlier this year. Now, it appears TuSimple is angling to use its U.S. funds — investor cash that the pre-revenue, high-cost business acquired once it delisted — to pay for a new business unit in AI animation and gaming. And shareholders like Hou are not happy about it.
“I write to you today …