Last month, Brett Adcock, founder of robotics entrepreneur AI, claimed in an article on X that his company is "now the most popular private stock in the secondary market."

However, the company has sent stop letters to at least two brokers operating in the secondary market, who told TechCrunch. These people say AI's stop and bookkeeping requires them to stop marketing company stocks.

Both brokers said that in mid-February, Bloomberg reported that their valuation was $39.5 billion - a 15-fold increase from the $2.6 billion valuation in February 2024.

A spokesman for Digure AI told TechCrunch that the company sent such letters without the company's authorization to sell its shares, indicating that it has a long history of sending such letters.

“This year, when we discovered that unauthorized third-party brokers were marketers stocks without the approval of the board of directors, the company sent a stop and stop to ask unauthorized brokers to stop, just as other unauthorized brokers had previously discovered did when they were discovered,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch in a written statement. “Without the Board’s authorization, we do not allow our shares to conduct secondary market transactions, the company will continue to protect itself from unnecessary third-party brokers in the market.”

Since Vigure is a private company, not a public company, investors cannot easily sell their shares, especially activities without company authorization. This limitation is why secondary markets emerge, including other ways to provide investors with alternative ways to get cash from stocks, such as loans obtained from their startup shares, which are repaid when the company is publicly available.

The secondary market at the receiving end of the character letter told TechCrunch that they have other theories about why some CEOs don't like to share sales in the market.

The brokers say existing shareholders are trying to sell their shares at a price below New Hope's $39.5 billion valuation. Both brokers told TechCrunch that some companies could compete with the new rounds for low-priced middle school stocks.

Sim Desai, founder and CEO of Hiive, the middle school stock market, did not comment on Figue's case, telling TechCrunch that the company sometimes blocks direct secondary sales because they think "it's a zero-sum game."

Desai naturally believes that the opposite situation may be correct: Active secondary market trading may arouse more interest in new stocks.

However, if secondary market activity fails to arouse interest in the first round, the problem may be with the valuation itself. "If someone has a hard time selling a commodity, it's just a function of price and valuation, not the availability of capital," Desai said.

The numbers have also recently become the subject of several news articles describing the progress of BMW, the character’s trademark client. In at least one case, the numbers have responded to the article with so much inaccuracy that it threatened to file a lawsuit.

As for how much AI will increase next - and under what valuation, it remains to be seen. It is also necessary to determine whether existing investors can cash in the secondary transaction.