Datavault AI vs. Wolfpack Research: The Defamation Complaint

Datavault AI Inc. (NASDAQ: DVLT) and its chief executive, Nathaniel T. Bradley, sued Wolfpack Research LLC and its founder, Dan David, for defamation in November 2025, alleging that a Wolfpack short-seller report published on October 31, 2025, was a “short-and-distort” campaign built on falsehoods. The case sits in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois as No. 1:25-cv-13724, and Wolfpack has since moved to dismiss it on jurisdictional grounds.¹²

What Wolfpack’s Report Alleged

The report ran under a long title accusing Datavault of being “A Joke Brought To You By A Promoter Sanctioned By The SEC Who Has Co-Authored Patents With A Convicted Felon Charged In An Elaborate Pump-And-Dump.”³ Wolfpack disclosed that it held a short position in DVLT, meaning it stood to profit if the price fell.

The report’s main points:

Datavault was a “reverse merger” running on “misleading press releases and empty claims” about AI, quantum computing, and data monetization.⁴
CEO Bradley was a “Promoter Sanctioned By The SEC,” a reference to his 2021 settlement in the Parallax Health Sciences matter.³
Bradley had co-authored patents with Edward Withrow III, a convicted felon who pleaded guilty to lying to the SEC in an Endeavor Power Corp. stock scheme.⁵
Datavault’s blockchain marketplace showed almost no trading, and a promoted “Center for AI and Quantum Computing Excellence” was a small office with minimal staff.⁵
A $150 million investment agreement with Scilex Holding Company could nearly double Datavault’s outstanding share count if completed.⁵

DVLT had climbed roughly 800% in the weeks before the report. The stock fell 9.5% on the day it was published,⁵ and according to the complaint kept sliding from $2.52 on October 30 to $1.44 on November 7, a drop of about 42%.³

The Complaint: Court, Claims, and Relief

Datavault issued a formal response the same day the report ran, calling it “self-serving and malicious” and retaining Paul Hastings LLP and Dickinson Wright PLLC, with Dickinson Wright’s securities enforcement chair Jacob Frenkel as lead litigation counsel.⁶ The company sent a cease-and-desist demand; according to the complaint, Wolfpack’s counsel took more than a week to respond and declined to retract.³

The suit was filed in the Northern District of Illinois and disclosed to investors in a Form 8-K on November 10, 2025.⁷ It brings six causes of action: defamation per se and per quod; false light on behalf of Bradley individually; tortious interference with existing and prospective business relationships; unjust enrichment, seeking disgorgement of Wolfpack’s short-selling profits; and declaratory relief asking the court to declare the report’s statements defamatory.³

The plaintiffs seek monetary damages to be determined at trial, disgorgement of Wolfpack’s profits from the short position, and an order forcing the defendants to take down the report and related social media posts.³

How Datavault Answers Each Allegation

The complaint calls the report “riddled with outright falsehoods, inflammatory accusations and cherry-picked half-truths.” Datavault says its Data Vault platform is a “fully operational, enterprise-grade data exchange” with more than 100 active datasets, and blames Wolfpack’s finding of minimal activity on a client’s public demo data being mistaken for real platform usage.³

On the office question, the company says the address Wolfpack linked to a beauty salon is only its registered agent and mailing address, that its New York co-working space is used for strategy meetings, and that it publicly announced a headquarters move from Oregon to Philadelphia on October 23, 2025.³

On Bradley’s SEC history, the complaint acknowledges the 2021 settlement but frames it as “civil, not criminal” and notes it “did not involve any admission of wrongdoing, let alone a finding of fraud.”³ On the Withrow tie, Datavault says the link is “a co-investment in a number of patents on behalf of one of Datavault’s shareholders, EOS Technology Holdings Inc.,” and that Withrow “is not an officer, director, or control person” of Datavault or EOS.⁸

The company also disputes characterizations of its deals with Scilex Holding, Burke Products, and Nature’s Miracle Holding as “untrue,” attributing one discrepancy in the Scilex filing to a “clerical error.”³ Its formal press release pointed to more than 70 U.S. and international patents, about $1.7 million in Q2 2025 revenue (which the company described as a 500% year-over-year increase), and roughly $160 million raised between September and November 2025.⁶

Wolfpack’s Motion to Dismiss

On January 30, 2026, Wolfpack Research and Dan David moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the Northern District of Illinois lacks both subject-matter and personal jurisdiction. Their filing, as reported by Law360, argues the parties and the allegations have “no meaningful connection to Illinois.”² No ruling on the motion has been reported in the available record.

Who the Parties Are

Nathaniel Bradley and the Parallax Settlement

In July 2021, the SEC charged Bradley in a civil enforcement action tied to Parallax Health Sciences, where he had served as chief technology officer. The SEC alleged that Parallax issued misleading press releases in March and April 2020 claiming it was developing a COVID-19 screening test and had PPE for sale, when the company was in fact insolvent and lacked the required FDA registrations.⁹ The SEC said Bradley helped draft two of the releases but was “unaware of” the CEO’s plan to inflate the stock price. He was charged under Section 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act and settled without admitting or denying the allegations, agreeing to a $40,000 penalty and a three-year penny stock bar.¹⁰

The Withrow connection has its own history. A 2012 AudioEye SEC filing shows Bradley, Withrow, and others collectively held about 42.5% of AudioEye common stock after a corporate restructuring, indicating a longstanding business relationship between the two men.¹¹

Edward Withrow III

Withrow, former chairman of Boston-based Endeavor Power Corp., was indicted in Massachusetts federal court in 2015. He pleaded guilty in May 2018 to one count of making false statements to the SEC, admitting he had misled investigators during sworn testimony about the ownership of roughly 40 million unrestricted Endeavor shares that had been placed in Switzerland. In December 2018 he was sentenced to five months of home detention, five years of probation, and a $10,000 fine.¹²

Wolfpack Research and Dan David

Wolfpack is an activist short-selling firm founded by Dan David in 2019 and backed by Carson Block’s Muddy Waters Capital.¹³ David co-founded GeoInvesting in 2006 and was featured in the 2018 documentary “The China Hustle” about fraud in U.S.-listed Chinese companies.¹⁴ Its reports carry a standard disclaimer: “You are reading a short-biased opinion piece. Obviously, we will make money if the price of the covered issuer stock declines.”³ That business model, and the disclosed short position, sit at the heart of Datavault’s “short-and-distort” theory.

Related Fallout: Class Action Probe and Nasdaq Notice

The defamation suit is not the only legal issue tied to DVLT. By June 2026, Robbins LLP was investigating Datavault to determine whether officers and directors had violated securities laws or breached fiduciary duties, and it issued a notice reminding investors of a lead plaintiff deadline in a potential class action. The notice did not specify a formal class period or a case number.¹⁵

On February 24, 2026, Datavault received a Nasdaq notice that DVLT had traded below the $1.00 minimum bid price for 30 consecutive business days, putting it out of compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2). The company was given until August 24, 2026, to close at or above $1.00 for at least ten consecutive trading days, with a possible second 180-day extension after that, potentially via a reverse stock split. Datavault said there is “no assurance” it will regain compliance.¹⁶ As of June 17, 2026, DVLT was trading around $0.40, well below its October 2025 highs.¹⁷

1
SEC.gov. Datavault AI Inc. Form 8-K Exhibit 99.2
2
Law360. Short Seller Seeks Exit From Blockchain Co’s Defamation Suit
3
SEC.gov. Datavault AI Inc. Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1
4
Wolfpack Research. DVLT: A Joke Brought to You by a Promoter Sanctioned by the SEC
5
Investing.com. Datavault AI Stock Tumbles After Wolfpack Research Reveals Short Position
6
Datavault AI Investor Relations. Datavault AI Issues Formal Response to Wolfpack Research’s Malicious Short Report
7
PACER Monitor. Datavault AI Inc. et al v. Wolfpack Research LLC et al, Case 1:25-cv-13724
8
Datavault AI Investor Relations. Datavault AI 8-K Filing
9
SEC.gov. SEC Litigation Release No. 25137
10
SEC.gov. SEC Complaint, Case 1:21-cv-05812
11
SEC.gov. AudioEye Inc. Form S-1/A
12
U.S. Department of Justice. Former Chairman of Boston-Based Biomedical Company Sentenced for Making False Statements
13
Institutional Investor. Dan David Starts Research Firm Backed by Short Seller Carson Block
14
Wolfpack Research. About Wolfpack Research
15
GlobeNewsWire. DVLT Class Action Notice: Robbins LLP Reminds Investors of Lead Plaintiff Deadline
16
Stock Titan. Datavault AI Inc. Reports Material Event
17
Investing.com. Datavault AI Receives Nasdaq Notice for Minimum Bid Price Noncompliance