SkyAI Faces Dual Board Challenge From Shareholder Group and Forward Industries Ahead of September 18 Meeting
Solana treasury company SkyAI is heading into its September 18 annual meeting with two separate groups trying to unseat its entire board of directors — one a would-be acquirer the board already rejected, the other a shareholder bloc accusing the company of quietly weakening investor rights. Here’s how the standoff developed.
June: An Offer, Rejected
Forward Industries, which describes itself as a Solana treasury company in its own right, offered to acquire SkyAI in an all-stock deal valued at $1.55 per share — a roughly 20% premium to SkyAI’s trading price at the time. SkyAI’s board reviewed the proposal and unanimously rejected it in July, according to Forward’s own account of the process.
September 3: A Shareholder Files to Withhold
Bastion Trading and affiliated shareholders, who together control a 9.99% stake in SkyAI, disclosed in an SEC filing that they intend to vote “WITHHOLD ALL” on the reelection of all five of SkyAI’s director nominees at the upcoming meeting. The group’s stated grievances center on bylaw changes it says weakened shareholder rights, the adoption of a poison-pill takeover defense without a shareholder vote, and related-party transactions it wants disclosed and reviewed.
September 9: Forward Industries Opens a Second Front
Rebuffed as a suitor, Forward Industries returned as an activist instead. The company published a public letter urging SkyAI’s shareholders to withhold their votes from all five directors and to vote against the company’s proposed 2026 Equity Incentive Plan, which would authorize 5,145,000 new shares for stock-based compensation — roughly 7.2% dilution against SkyAI’s existing share base. Forward’s letter argued that “the Board cannot ask shareholders to support the directors who have overseen significant value destruction while also approving millions of additional shares.” Among the nominees named in the dispute is Yuwen (Alice) Zhang, SkyAI’s Chief Investment Officer, whose brother James Zhang controls Sol Edge Limited and Sol Markets — a related-party connection the dissident shareholders have flagged directly.
What’s Actually at Stake
The numbers explain why this fight is happening now. SkyAI’s underlying Solana treasury is worth roughly $207 million, while the company’s own market capitalization sits at only about $59 million — a gap wide enough that both an acquirer and a shareholder bloc see room to argue current leadership is destroying value relative to the assets on the balance sheet. If the September 18 vote goes against the board, SkyAI could face a rare public rebuke on both governance and strategy within the same meeting, at a moment when Solana treasury companies broadly are under scrutiny for how tightly their market prices track the tokens they actually hold.
SkyAI has not publicly responded in detail to either the Bastion Trading filing or Forward Industries’ letter as of this writing. The company’s board and its critics will get their answer in just over a week.
Digital asset treasury companies carry risks distinct from the underlying cryptocurrencies they hold, including corporate governance and dilution risk. This is not investment advice. For background on how corporate crypto treasuries work, see Coin680’s Bitcoin Academy.