Kim Dotcom launching Mega
Kim Dotcom, seen here at the launch of Mega, has claimed the company was the subject of a hostile takeover, but these have been dismissed as "defamatory and self-serving" by the board of directors Reuters

Tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has declared the death of Mega, the file storage company he co-founded, after two new shareholders at the firm took majority ownership.

Dotcom tweeted on 13 August "R.I.P. #Mega" following the announcement of a $7.5m (£4.8m, €6.75m) funding round that left Li Zhi Min with 43% of the company and Yang Jianhong with 24%.

"New and existing investors fully support Mega and this is very evident in the latest funding round," said Mega chief executive Graham Gaylard. "Mega now has over 22m registered users and the rate of growth has now increased to over 1.5m new users per month."

In a Q&A session on Slashdot last month Dotcom revealed that he was no longer involved with Mega. Dotcom also claimed that Mega had become untrustworthy and had been the subject to a hostile takeover from a Chinese investor wanted for fraud.

Mega labelled Dotcom's comments "defamatory" and "self-serving" and said that there was no truth behind the hostile takeover claims.

"Mega views Mr Dotcom's defamatory comments as self-serving and designed to simply spruce his supposed new business venture," read a statement from Mega's board of directors that was emailed to IBTmes UK at the time. "They are inconsistent with his previous desire to ensure that the shareholding in Mega remains a valuable asset for his children and reflect just how completely Mr Dotcom and Mega have now moved apart.

"Like all start-up companies, Mega has had several funding rounds of equity investment. More than 75% of shareholders have supported recent equity issues, so there has not been any 'hostile takeover', contrary to Mr Dotcom's assertion."

Dotcom has since announced his ambitions to launch another file storage service that will be open-source and non-profit. Following his departure from Mega and the closure of MegaUpload, this would be his third attempt to create such a service.

"I'm planning to create a new, non-profit, open source, free, unlimited and encrypted cloud storage, chat and email service," Dotcom said.

"Over the past 2 years I have come up with some great ideas and when my noncompetition clause with Mega ends I will get right into building the best team of developers and crypto experts. It will take a while but you won't have to worry about shareholders this time because this site will belong to you, our users."

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