Brendan Foody, the co-founder of AI talent platform Mercor, which most recently hit a $10 billion valuation, publicly accused Sequoia Capital of running what he called a "Sequoia scam" involving "dual-pricing" tactics in venture deals. In a post on X, Foody claimed that within just the past six months he had seen roughly half a dozen rounds in which Sequoia invested in two separate tranches, with the higher headline valuation being the only one disclosed to the public. He alleged that founders then misrepresented these inflated numbers to their employees and used them to court angel investors, creating a misleading picture of the company's actual worth. The mechanism Foody described is one TechCrunch has previously examined: a lead investor pours most of its committed capital into a startup at a lower, preferential valuation while placing a smaller slice at a much higher price, so the announced "headline" figure reflects only the top-tier tranche. The gap between perception and reality can be substantial — the AI-driven IT helpdesk company Serval, for instance, announced a $75 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation led by Sequoia, but according to The Wall Street Journal, just days earlier the firm had participated in a Series A extension that valued Serval at under $400 million, less than half the public number. A similar dynamic played out at Aaru, the AI-based market research startup, where lead investor Redpoint backed the company at $450 million even as the round was announced with a $1 billion headline price. Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire pushed back against Foody's framing, writing on X that while he had personally witnessed this type of behavior a handful of times, calling it a "Sequoia scam" was unfair. Maguire said the practice had occurred approximately five times during his seven years at the firm and suggested the responsibility lay with broader market dynamics rather than any single investor's playbook. The exchange comes amid a wider wave of founder complaints on X in recent days, with entrepreneurs sharing stories ranging from investors dozing off during pitches to pressure to oust co-founders, signaling growing public friction between founders and the venture capital establishment.