Archil Cheishvili, 33, co-founded GenesisAI Corp. in 2018 with the aim of building a marketplace where companies needing artificial intelligence could connect with companies that had built it. From December 2019 through December 2024, Cheishvili and the company raised more than $5.3 million from more than 4,000 investors, almost all of them ordinary retail investors, through a series of Regulation Crowdfunding and Regulation A offerings. He was the CEO, an officer, and a board member, and according to the SEC he created or approved every statement the company made. He forecast that GenesisAI would reach $250 million in annual revenue by 2024. The company generated no revenue at all from 2018 through 2021, roughly $8,000 in 2022, about $9,000 in 2023, and approximately $40,000 in 2024, most of it from an email-blasting tool rather than the AI marketplace itself. Public filings reviewed by investors show Cheishvili paid himself a $200,000 salary in 2020, when the company had no product and no revenue, and raised it to $350,000 by 2023. On August 26, 2026, the SEC filed a complaint against GenesisAI and Cheishvili in the Southern District of Florida.
The charge matters as much as the conduct. The SEC’s complaint charges a single count under Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act, which is a negligence-based provision. The Commission is not alleging that Cheishvili set out to deceive anyone. It is alleging that he made material misrepresentations he should have known were unfounded, repeatedly, to thousands of small investors. The complaint seeks permanent injunctions against both defendants, disgorgement and prejudgment interest and a civil penalty from Cheishvili, and a three-year officer and director bar. The investigation was handled by the SEC’s Miami office.
A $250 Million Forecast Built on a Beta Product and No Customers
The revenue projections began in December 2019, when GenesisAI launched its first crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder. A slide deck available to investors carried a graph titled Revenue Forecast, showing a line starting at zero in mid-2020 and climbing steadily to $250 million by 2024. In an email to a prospective investor that same month, Cheishvili projected $1 million in revenue for 2020 and $8 million for 2021. In February 2020 he told an investor in the comments section of the Wefunder page that the company estimated reaching around $25 million within three years. In an April 2020 email he said GenesisAI had many companies and users on a waitlist and was targeting $500,000 in revenue that year and $5 million the next.
According to the SEC, none of this had a reasonable basis. The marketplace was in beta and would not fully launch until May 2022. There were no agreements or commitments from customers. There was, the complaint states flatly, no waitlist. The graph carried a disclaimer that the forecast was not guaranteed, but the SEC found that insufficient, because the projection itself created a misleading impression that revenue was months away and would climb steeply when Cheishvili had no reasonable basis to expect any of it. Later in 2020 the company stopped publishing revenue projections altogether. The $250 million target for 2024 was missed by more than 99.98 percent.
A Valuation That Went From $7.5M to $204M While Revenue Stayed at Zero
The valuation trajectory ran in the opposite direction from the business. GenesisAI’s first crowdfunding offering in 2019 used an implied valuation of $7.5 million, a figure Cheishvili set. By April 2021 the offering documents put the company at approximately $47 million. By September 2021 it was approximately $89 million. By the July 2022 Netcapital campaign it was $204 million, more than double the previous year. Across that entire period the company had produced no meaningful revenue and its only significant asset was cash raised from investors.
When investors questioned how a company with no revenue could be worth $204 million, Cheishvili told them the valuation was based on comparables. What he did not tell them, according to the complaint, was that he alone had produced that valuation, using companies he personally selected as comparable. The SEC found his comparison process had no independent support, and that the companies he chose had substantial customers, far more developed products, or serious venture capital backing, none of which GenesisAI had. To support the rising numbers, the company pointed to its growing count of registered users, from 1,000 in 2021 to more than 2,600 by 2023. Becoming a registered user meant filling out a form with a name, affiliation, and email address. It required no financial commitment, and GenesisAI did not track how many of those users were active.
25 Partnerships That Were Non-Binding Memoranda, and $780,000 Spent Recruiting More Investors
In 2020 and 2021 GenesisAI’s slide deck and crowdfunding pages advertised over 25 partnerships. In 2022 the offering circular told investors the company had over 15 agreements with AI companies interested in deploying tools on the marketplace. In reality, according to the SEC, the company had no partnership agreements with anyone. What it had were non-binding memoranda of understanding, some of which had already expired by 2021. The word partnership did the work of implying committed business relationships that did not exist.
The money raised went substantially toward raising more money. From 2020 through 2024, GenesisAI paid X, Google, and Meta at least $780,000 combined for advertising that promoted both the product and the investment offerings. The company solicited through social media, online ads, mass marketing email campaigns, crowdfunding portal pages, its own website, and even a sidewalk display advertisement. In 2023 GenesisAI built an AI email server tool capable of sending large, cheap email blasts unconstrained by third-party provider limits, and then deployed that tool to reach new potential investors. By 2024 that email tool, not the AI marketplace, was generating most of what little revenue the company had. GenesisAI raised across four crowdfunding campaigns, one on Wefunder and three on Netcapital, the crowdfunding portal whose own executives the SEC separately charged in August 2026 over sham consulting revenue. A StartEngine round begun in September 2021 was cancelled by StartEngine itself.
Between February and June 2022, Cheishvili Sold His Own Shares
The 2022 Regulation A offering, conducted through registered broker-dealer Dalmore Group, permitted Cheishvili to sell a portion of the GenesisAI stock the company had granted him. Between February and June 2022 he sold 12,000 shares and made approximately $51,000 in profit. That was during the same window in which the company was telling investors it was worth $204 million. On January 2, 2025, GenesisAI announced that its board had decided it was in the best interests of the company to cease developing its products, and that Cheishvili was stepping down from his role as CEO and all other roles. The company said his departure was not due to any disagreement. Five years, more than $5 million, and over 4,000 investors produced a company with no product and roughly $40,000 in annual revenue. The Regulation Crowdfunding rules that made the raise possible were designed to open early-stage investing to ordinary people who cannot access venture capital deals.
Conclusion
Archil Cheishvili told more than 4,000 retail investors that GenesisAI would generate $250 million a year by 2024. It made about $40,000, most of it from a bulk email tool. He raised the stated valuation from $7.5 million to $204 million while revenue stayed at zero, set that valuation himself, and called it comparables. He advertised 25 partnerships that were non-binding memoranda. He spent $780,000 on ads that brought in more investors. He paid himself $200,000 in 2020 and $350,000 by 2023. He sold $51,000 of his own stock. In January 2025 the company stopped developing its product and he resigned. The SEC charged him with negligence, not intent, which means the Commission is not saying he planned this. It is saying he should have known better every time he said it.
