HyperVerse was an ambitious metaverse project, with an equally impressive CEO. But the company is accused by many regulators of being a pyramid scam, and the newspaper The Guardian explains that it cannot confirm the existence of its boss.
In his videoSteve Wozniak, one of the co-founders of Apple, explained that he was “ impatient » to test HyperVerse, and that it “ supported Steven “. The famous actor Chuck Norris also had a word for the business leader: “ under the tutelage of CEO Steven, HyperVerse will be the leader of the metaverse “, the actor could be heard saying in a video. The Steven the two personalities were referring to in December 2021 was Steven Reece Lewis, the CEO of HyperVerse, a company supposed to build the metaverse of the future.
Two years later, the reality is quite different. The metaverse project never saw the light of day, HyperVerse is accused by a Guardian investigation and numerous financial regulators of being a pyramid scam, and its CEO, Steven Reece Lewis, seems not to really exist. This is the conclusion of the Guardian, which devoted a specific article to the question of the ghost boss: after extensive research, the newspaper found no tangible proof of the existence of the man including Steve Wozniak, Chuck Norris and others sang its praises in promotional videos.
Who is Steven Reece Lewis, the boss who doesn’t exist?
HyperVerse was part of a galaxy of companies set up by Sam Lee and Ryan Xu, two Australian-based entrepreneurs specializing in cryptocurrencies. They also started Blockchain Global, a company that went bankrupt in November 2021 with $58 million in debt, as well as HyperTech, another company that was supposed to oversee HyperVerse.
When it was launched in December 2021, HyperVerse launched a large advertising campaign, notably recruiting the services of Steve Wozniak, Chuck Norris and other influencers to make videos on the project. These videos and other content published on social networks highlighted Steven Reece Lewis, the CEO supposedly recruited by Sam Lee and Ryan Xu to build the metaverse of the future.
On social networks and on the HyperVerse website, Steven Reece Lewis was presented as a graduate of the universities of Leeds and Cambridge, and as a former member of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. He also reportedly founded and sold a development company to Adobe before being recruited by the HyperTech Group to run HyperVerse.
But despite his impressive CV, Steven Reece Lewis wouldn’t exist. Following an investigation, the Guardian “ has confirmed that neither the University of Leeds nor the University of Cambridge have any record of a person named Steven Reece Lewis in their databases. […] Adobe, a publicly traded company since 1986, has no record of acquiring a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public filings. Goldman Sachs could find no record of Reece Lewis having worked for the company “.
He only officially appeared as CEO of HyperVerse in a few videos, in November and December 2021, in which he appears pixelated. In subsequent HyperVerse videos, Steven Reece Lewis is no longer mentioned.
The newspaper was also unable to find a LinkedIn profile for Steven Reece Lewis, or any other trace of the man on the Internet outside of HyperVerse promotional material: his Twitter account, created a month before he took the stand, is now inactive. The Guardian has never been able to contact him, and states “ not being able to confirm your identity “. As for HyperVerse, the project disappeared from the Internet in 2023, explains the newspaper.
The question of the videos remains: who appeared on the screen? The Guardian offers no leads. However, it is possible to imagine that artificial intelligence could have been used to create a deepfake – especially since the person appearing in the videos does not have quite the same features as the one appearing in the photo of Twitter profile of Steven Reece Lewis.
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