Datavault AI Shares Halve After Firm Says It Cannot Withdraw Bitcoin From $150M Scilex Deal

Datavault AI Inc. (DVLT) lost nearly half its market value on Tuesday after disclosing in an SEC filing that it cannot withdraw a significant amount of bitcoin tied to a $150 million deal with Scilex Holding Co.

The stock closed near $0.067, down 49.6% from the prior close of $0.133. Nearly 250 million shares changed hands, an eightfold increase from the previous trading day.

What went wrong with the Scilex deal?

The problem traces back to a September 2025 securities purchase agreement under which Scilex agreed to buy 15 million shares of Datavault AI common stock plus a pre-funded warrant covering more than 263.9 million shares. Scilex committed $150 million, payable in bitcoin — approximately 1,328.43 BTC at a rate of $112,915.52 per coin.

The bitcoin was credited to a company digital wallet held at Biconomy Pte. Ltd., operating as the Bitconomy exchange, through an off-chain transfer. Between September 2025 and January 2026, Datavault AI sold a portion of the credited bitcoin back to Scilex for approximately $40.5 million in cash.

In June 2026, the company requested to move bitcoin out of the Biconomy wallet to an external account. As of Oct. 26, the withdrawal had still not been completed. The Form 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that day, offered no explanation for why the transfer failed.

The Block has reached out to both Datavault AI and Scilex for comment.

How bad is the accounting damage?

The filing states that more than a year of financial statements cannot be relied upon because of an accounting error tied to the large bitcoin-denominated equity transaction. Datavault AI determined the bitcoin associated with the Scilex deal did not meet the requirements for recognition as a company digital asset.

Instead, the amounts should have been recorded as a subscription receivable from the equity issuance, presented as a reduction of stockholders' equity. The company intends to restate the affected statements but has not set a timeline for those filings.

The restatements are expected to reduce total assets by specific amounts across four reporting dates:

• $8.1 million as of Sept. 30, 2025
• $92.2 million as of Dec. 31, 2025
• $57.1 million as of March 31, 2026
• $49 million as of June 30, 2026

The December 2025 figure is the largest, exceeding eleven times the September reduction — a spread that shows how the balance-sheet treatment shifted quarter to quarter before the correction.

Why does going-concern status now hang in the balance?

Management is reassessing its going-concern evaluation, according to the filing, because it previously counted the bitcoin balances as a source of liquidity. With the withdrawal stalled and collection of amounts from Scilex uncertain, that liquidity assumption no longer holds.

The operational consequence is twofold. First, roughly 1,328 BTC nominally credited to the company sits in a wallet the company says it cannot access, and the filing gives no timeline for resolution. Second, the roughly $40.5 million already recovered through bitcoin sales back to Scilex is the only confirmed cash return from the arrangement so far.

Investors now face a company whose audited figures for four consecutive quarters are set to shrink materially, with restatement filings unscheduled and a custodial dispute at a Singapore-registered exchange unexplained in public documents.

The next concrete signal will be the timing of the restated filings and any disclosure on the Biconomy withdrawal — neither of which the company has yet committed to a date.