Ratmir Timashev at a Board of Trustees meeting in 2023. He is being sued in relation to his OH.io AI Venture. Credit: Becca Duncan | Lantern File Photo
A top university donor and alum, Ratmir Timashev, has been accused of fraud, breach of contract and civil conspiracy in a lawsuit filed by former executives of an artificial intelligence startup venture.
The suit, filed on April 14 in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, is from Jeff Schumann, Kevin Colo?n and J. Seth Metcalf, who claim in the suit that they were fired by Timashev and his partners after they complained about how the startup was funded.
In early 2023, Timashev donated $110 million to establish the Center for Software Innovation, per prior Lantern reporting. In 2020, Timashev and his wife gave $17 million towards the construction of the Timashev Family Music Building, according to an Ohio State press release.
Timashev did not respond in time for publication.
The former executives claim in the lawsuit that Timashev encouraged Schumann to leave his previous job, where he would be making millions of dollars as CEO for tech project, OH.io.?
Schumann also claims in the suit that Timashev promised he would fund the project with $50 million and 10% of carry interest for the funds of the project to make up for the money that Schumann lost for giving up his old job.
Similarly, the suit contends Timashev encouraged Colo?n and Metcalf to leave their well-paying jobs to become the CROs for the AI company and would fund the project with an additional $50 million and a participation of the company’s carry interest.
The three former executives allege that Timashev teamed up with Gordon Caplan and Joon Park, who were given operational control of the project. The three executives said that Caplan and Park made sure that the project was not funded in the way that Timashev had promised.
Schumann, Colo?n and Metcalf said that after they had made it clear that the project funds were not playing out in the way that Timashev had promised, they were fired.?
According to the company’s LinkedIn page, OH.io venture is transforming Columbus into a “true startup technology capital by giving founders what they’ve needed and rarely received: an embedded, accountable GTM engine that delivers revenue.”
The page states that the company is also powered by an AI-driven “Go-to-market” or GTM platform. They partnered with Business-to-Business Software-as-a-Service founders to build the company.
The case remains active with the initial disclosures of the parties, meaning the parties must exchange core information with the court, to be due on June 6.
