Rippling, a HR technology startup, has sued rival firm Deel for alleged corporate espionage. The lawsuit claims Deel recruited a Rippling employee, identified as D.S., to access and steal confidential information including sales pipeline details. The complaint asserts that D.S. viewed and downloaded sensitive material over 1,300 times within a few months. To confirm their suspicions, Rippling created a concealed Slack channel to flush out the potential spy. Both companies are heavily valued unicorns operating in the competitive HR tech landscape.
In total, Slack logs of D.S.'s activity establish that he secretly viewed and downloaded information from Rippling Slack channels dedicated to prospective clients over 1,300 times between November 2024 and March 2025.
Rippling's forensic investigation has uncovered several examples of how D.S. plundered these prospective customer Sales and Marketing Trade Secrets in a pattern demonstrating an intent to misappropriate them for Deel's commercial benefit.
Rippling suspected it may have a spy in its midst and devised a cunning scheme to smoke them out.
The alleged spy was unaware of the channel's existence and had never accessed it.
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