Wilhoite

"Wilhoite" is not a company. The tracked party is a pair of individual stockholder plaintiffs — Norman and Judith Wilhoite — who filed a derivative suit on behalf of TuSimple Holdings, Inc. They have no corporate headquarters, products, or revenue, and no patent claims appear in the case (docketed nature of suit: Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016). The relevant corporate subject is the issuer they sued on behalf of.

Company overview (underlying issuer): CreateAI Holdings Inc., formerly TuSimple Holdings Inc., rebranded December 19, 2024. Founded 2015; headquartered in San Diego, California, with operations in China and Japan. Formerly Nasdaq-listed (IPO April 2021, ~$1.35B raised), voluntarily delisted in early 2024; now trades OTC under TSPH (small-cap, roughly $40M market value per market data). Headcount has been reported in the 210–270 range post-pivot; CEO Cheng Lu. It is not a subsidiary; it is a standalone public company.

Products / operations: Originally an autonomous-trucking developer — L4 autonomous semi-trucks, an Autonomous Freight Network, the TuSimple Path software stack, TuSimpleConnect cloud oversight, and the NVIDIA-partnered TuSimple Domain Controller. It shut down U.S. trucking operations and now focuses on generative AI for digital entertainment: the open-source Ruyi image-to-video model, the Animon.ai anime video platform, and game/anime projects including Heroes of Jin Yong and The Three-Body Problem. It continues to pursue licensing of its autonomous-driving IP.

Litigation posture: A one-way derivative plaintiff, not a patent litigant. Wilhoite v. Hou, No. 3:23-cv-02333-BEN-MSB (S.D. Cal.), filed Dec 22, 2023, asserted DTSA and California UTSA misappropriation and civil-conspiracy claims against Xiaodi Hou, Mo Chen, Cheng Lu, Guowei Charles Chao and TuSimple, alleging trade-secret transfer to Hydron. A TRO issued in early 2024; the court preliminarily approved settlement April 17, 2025, entered final judgment July 23, 2025, and Hou noticed a Ninth Circuit appeal August 19, 2025. Venue is the defendant's home district, not a plaintiff-friendly patent venue.

Context: Parallel derivative litigation proceeded in Delaware (In re TuSimple Holdings), alongside a CFIUS national-security settlement (May 2024, $6.0M fine), an SEC investigation, Hou's Delaware Chancery control/liquidation challenge, and a reported $189M securities-fraud settlement.