Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 3/5 debate potential 4/5

Kuveke: Deel planted a spy in Rippling to steal Slack data

Jack Kuveke · Adam Neumann Returns, SV Spies, AI Robots Rise | April Startup News w/ Jack Kuveke · PMF Show · May 8, 2025 · at 7:50

Jack Kuveke discusses the April 2024 corporate espionage controversy between HR software competitors Deel and Rippling.

0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.8s

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“Apparently what went on is a deal found an ex rippling and found a rippling employee and basically planted them in the company. And then this guy just went into Slack channels and stole all of their like rippling sales and marketing information and Pawned off the deal. And then it turned out that the CEO of deal was involved with this guy who was making like 62,000 dollars a year out of the Ireland office in Rippling.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Deel coordinated with an employee in Rippling's Ireland office to steal Rippling's sales and marketing information from Slack channels.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim accurately reflects documented legal filings and sworn court admissions. In an unsealed April 1, 2025, affidavit filed in the High Court of Ireland, Dublin-based Rippling employee Keith O'Brien admitted under oath that he was recruited by Deel's leadership in September 2024 to extract confidential company information. O'Brien confirmed that he conducted thousands of searches across Rippling's internal Slack channels, Google Drive, and Salesforce—specifically harvesting sales and marketing battlecards, client switch lists, and strategy documents—and transmitted this proprietary data to Deel leadership in exchange for recurring payments.

March 17, 2025: Rippling filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Rippling v. Deel, Inc.) alleging Deel recruited a Dublin-based employee to extract confidential data primarily via Slack and internal systems.
April 1–2, 2025: In a sworn 15-page Irish High Court affidavit, Ireland-based employee Keith O'Brien admitted to acting as an informant for Deel, conducting Slack and Salesforce searches for sales/marketing materials, and sending screenshots/files to Deel leadership for monthly payments.
April 10, 2025: Irish High Court Justice Mark Sanfey formally accepted O'Brien's cooperation and affidavit detailing the data exfiltration.

Checked against

[1] rippling.com [2] govinfo.gov [3] mimecast.com [4] rippling.com [5] hr-brew.com [6] businessinsider.com [7] irishtimes.com [8] irishtimes.com

Deel Rippling employee Ireland proprietary information Slack "Keith O'Brien" Rippling Deel affidavit High Court Ireland Rippling Deel Ireland employee Slack steal sales marketing Deel Rippling lawsuit Ireland Slack Rippling Deel industrial espionage Ireland employee "Keith O'Brien" Rippling Deel "Alex Bouaziz" Slack

assessed as of 2026-09-05

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

Deel Rippling Slack

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Kuveke: Deel planted a spy in Rippling to steal Slack data

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