\u201cI think I\u2019ve got enough material. I\u2019m not joking,\u201d he told AdExchanger.<\/p>\n
Speaking of material, in late November, Alphonso\u2019s founders fired their latest salvo, a lawsuit filed in the California Superior Court of Santa Clara County that seeks more than $1.5 billion in personal punitive damages as a result of an alleged breach of fiduciary duty. <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/advertisement2.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
In plain English: LGE allegedly squeezed Alphonso\u2019s founders off the board, capped their profits at 15% and pocketed more than $100 million while blocking an IPO with the intention of buying them out cheap.<\/p>\n
The suit further alleges that LGE\u2019s actions weren\u2019t isolated maneuvers but part of a calculated pattern to erode the value and influence of minority shareholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we think a lot of bad things were done and we\u2019re going to prosecute to the maximum extent we can,\u201d Chordia said. \u201cAnd we feel that discovery will show what we believe to be true based on what we already know.\u201d<\/p>\n
LG Ads declined to comment on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Inventory disagreement<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs are asking for a jury trial and, if they win, they could be awarded up to $4.5 billion, because California\u2019s penal code allows for treble damages in cases of proven theft.<\/p>\n
And the complaint is jam-packed with juicy details that would play well to a jury, including an alleged secret plan to eliminate shareholder protections for Alphonso\u2019s founders.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s back it up.<\/p>\n
The drama began with what should have been a straightforward agreement detailing how Alphonso would price, buy and sell LG\u2019s ad inventory.<\/p>\n
When the two companies first hammered out the terms of their inventory agreement in April 2021 \u2013 eventually finalizing pricing at a $1.52 CPM for display and $3.20 for video, which were favorable rates for Alphonso \u2013 the idea was to put Alphonso in a prime position to IPO, a plan LGE had committed to in the original stockholders agreement.<\/p>\n
But the spirit of partnership didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n
The ink was barely dry on the final pricing when, according to the complaint, LGE\u2019s leadership pressured Alphonso\u2019s management to renegotiate the deal, with LGE demanding a five- to six-fold price increase for inventory that would kick in retroactively.<\/p>\n
LGE allegedly also tried to strong-arm KPMG, the outside accounting firm that helped set the price, into revising its prior analysis. Alphonso\u2019s management and independent board members pushed back, and LGE\u2019s proposed amendment to the inventory agreement didn\u2019t go through.<\/p>\n
But, according to the complaint, that didn\u2019t stop LGE. \u201cUnable to amend the inventory agreement,\u201d the suit claims, \u201cLGE simply breached it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, the inventory agreement included an exclusivity clause that gave Alphonso the sole right to sell LG\u2019s ad inventory and full control over sales decisions. According to the suit, LGE ignored this clause and cut side deals with two third-party streaming and TV ad platforms \u2013\u00a0AppLovin-owned Wurl and Amagi \u2013\u00a0to sell LG ad inventory.<\/p>\n
When Raghu Kodige, Alphonso\u2019s then CEO, flagged this as a violation of the inventory agreement, LGE didn\u2019t revise its contracts with Wurl or Amagi, which, according to the suit, caused Alphonso to lose out on millions in additional revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot content with this small \u2018victory,\u2019 the suit continues, LG\u2019s leadership allegedly then set \u201cProject Wall-E\u201d in motion, the aforementioned secret plan to strip minority shareholders of their voting rights, dissolve the stockholders agreement and squeeze out minority shareholders at the lowest-possible price so LGE could snap up the remaining shares for less than their fair value.<\/p>\n
LGE executed Project Wall-E \u2013\u00a0a reference to the Pixar movie about a trash-collecting robot \u2013\u00a0on December 16, 2022, with the mass firing of all key shareholders, including Chordia and Kodige.<\/p>\n
D\u00e9j\u00e0 sued<\/p>\n
If this all sounds familiar, that\u2019s because Alphonso has already notched several victories in other recent legal battles with LGE over shareholder rights and corporate control.<\/p>\n
This is Alphonso\u2019s fourth lawsuit related to LGE over the past two years.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Alphonso\u2019s co-founders sued<\/a> LGE twice in a Delaware court\u00a0over breach of contract and board misconduct. They won both times and had their board rights reinstated.<\/p>\n Over the summer, Lampros Kalampoukas, another Alphonso co-founder and the company\u2019s former CTO and VP of engineering, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court against risk and financial advisory services firm Kroll<\/a> for allegedly undervaluing Alphonso by nearly $100 million on purpose to benefit LGE in its legal battle with Alphonso\u2019s minority shareholders. That one\u2019s still pending.<\/p>\n Then, in September, several Alphonso co-founders filed an amended suit in Delaware seeking monetary damages from LGE and its Zenith subsidiary for the harm caused by the earlier board takeover fight.<\/p>\n But while those prior wins may have set important precedents, the latest case in California is different, because it\u2019s not structured as a class action. This suit was brought directly by minority shareholders, a strategy that allows them to pursue remedies not available in other earlier actions, including a jury trial and the possibility of significant punitive damages \u2013\u00a0$4.5 billion in this case.<\/p>\n Yet even as these legal battles continue to play out, Alphonso is getting itself ready to hit the public markets.<\/p>\n In August, Chordia hosted a press conference in Seoul, South Korea<\/a>, touting his IPO plans and, late the following month, Alphonso announced that it had confidentially filed paperwork with the SEC<\/a> to take the company public.<\/p>\n Although there\u2019s still a lot that\u2019s TBD here, one thing is clear: The Alphonso\/LGE standoff has plenty of twists and turns left to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ongoing corporate conflict between Alphonso and LG Electronics (LGE) has all the makings of a Netflix docuseries.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[26372,26373,26371,26374,26375,26376,9415,315,5140,357,314,26380,26377,26378,26379],"class_list":["post-44129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lg","tag-ad-tech-ipo","tag-alphonso","tag-alphonso-lg-electronics-lawsuit","tag-amagi","tag-ashish-chordia","tag-lampros-kalampoukas","tag-lawsuits","tag-lg","tag-lg-ads","tag-lg-electronics","tag-lg-group","tag-platforms","tag-raghu-kodige","tag-streaming-inventory","tag-wurl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}