Verses AI Inc., which trades over the counter under VRSSF, filed a Form 8-K on June 22, 2026, with an earliest-event date of June 15, 2026. The filing reports under Item 5.02 the departure of the company's President and Chief Operating Officer and, under Item 8.01, the company's decision to wind down the activity it was named for: artificial intelligence research and development. Both items are unusually direct for an 8-K, and the language is the company's own.

On the executive departure, the filing states that on June 15, 2026, James Hendrickson informed the Board that he was resigning as President and Chief Operating Officer effective immediately. The 8-K then records the stated reason without softening it: Hendrickson "advised the Company that his resignation was due to disagreements with the Board of Directors regarding, among other matters, the Company's compensation practices, including the non-payment of earned wages to certain W-2 employees, including himself." Item 5.02 requires that, where a director or specified officer resigns because of a disagreement with the registrant, the registrant describe the circumstances; here the registrant has done so by attributing the reason directly to the departing officer.

"Mr. Hendrickson advised the Company that his resignation was due to disagreements with the Board of Directors regarding, among other matters, the Company's compensation practices, including the non-payment of earned wages to certain W-2 employees, including himself."— Verses AI Inc., Form 8-K Item 5.02 (filed June 22, 2026), source

The 8-K's Item 8.01 turns to the business itself. It states that on June 18, 2026, the company issued a press release "announcing the Company's decision to discontinue its artificial intelligence research and development activities and refocus its efforts on evaluating and pursuing alternative business opportunities." That press release is attached as Exhibit 99.1. Read together, the two items describe a company recording both the loss of its President/COO and a decision to stop the core R&D program in the same filing.

What the attached press release adds

The exhibit, dated June 18, 2026, expands on the discontinuation and on the reasons the board gives for it. It states that "the Company intends to discontinue its artificial intelligence ('AI') research and development activities and refocus its efforts on evaluating and pursuing alternative business opportunities," and that the board "have determined that a strategic pivot away from AI research and development is in the best interests of shareholders given the Company's limited capital, capital market conditions, the state of our product development, and the timetable to commercialization and revenue." The release adds that the company "will cease its AI-related operations, including research, development, and related expenditures" to "preserve capital while pursuing strategic alternatives."

The release attributes the rationale to CEO David Scott, who states that when he "was appointed interim CEO in February, the Company was already facing extreme liquidity constraints and a challenging path to product development and revenue," and that during the prior four months the company "conducted exhaustive fundraising efforts and corporate development initiatives, such as merger with strategic and financial partners, or asset sales that we were unable to close." The exhibit further discloses that the company has accepted not only Hendrickson's resignation but also those of Hari Thiruvengada, Chief Technology Officer, and Karl Friston, Chief Science Officer, with the same compensation-practices disagreement cited. It also states the company is "terminating its licensing agreement with Prodigii AI, LLC" and "will not continue its relationship with the major global investment firm."

The going-concern caveats in the filing's own words

The press release does not present the strategic pivot as assured of success. It states that the company "is continuing to pursue a range of financing and strategic opportunities designed to maximize shareholder value; however, there can be no assurance that this pursuit will result in any transaction that will enable the Company to continue operations." It adds that "there can be no assurance regarding the outcome or timing of this process" and that "the Company may determine that no transaction or opportunity is appropriate." Those sentences, taken from the exhibit, are the document's plainest statements about the company's footing: the board has stopped the AI program, is seeking alternatives, and has disclosed that no transaction is guaranteed to keep operations going.

The exhibit's forward-looking-statements section reinforces the conditional framing, cautioning that "there can be no assurance that such plans will be completed as proposed or at all" and listing risks including that "severance and other one-off charges may offset projected savings" and that "inability to retain or hire critical leadership and technical personnel could impede strategy execution." The latter risk reads against the same filing's record of three named executive departures—President/COO, CTO, and Chief Science Officer—disclosed in the same documents.

The disclosure record

For the SEC record, the filing establishes a sequence: the resignation event dated June 15, the press release dated June 18, and the 8-K signed and filed June 22, 2026, by James Christodoulou, Chief Financial Officer. The company describes itself in the exhibit as "a cognitive computing company building next-generation intelligent agentic systems," with a flagship product, Genius, described as "an agentic enterprise intelligence platform." The 8-K does not quantify the unpaid wages, name the W-2 employees beyond the resigning executives, identify "the major global investment firm," or disclose the financial terms of the terminated Prodigii AI licensing agreement. What it does place on the record, in the registrant's own language, is that the President and COO resigned effective immediately over disagreements that included non-payment of earned wages, that two other senior executives resigned for stated reasons, and that the board has decided to discontinue the company's AI research and development to pursue alternatives—while disclosing that no such alternative is assured.