NEW YORK — In a dramatic escalation of corporate maneuvering, Vishal Garg, the controversial founder and former CEO of Better Home & Finance Holding Co., is mounting a high-stakes campaign to reclaim absolute control of the digital mortgage giant. Backed by high-profile legal representation and armed with the written support of shareholders holding a majority of the company’s voting power, Garg is moving to overhaul the board of directors just days after stepping down from the executive suite.
The aggressive push comes at a critical inflection point for Better Home & Finance. The company, which went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger in 2023, has watched its stock price plummet by more than 90% amid nearly three consecutive years of financial losses. While company leadership points to sweeping technological efficiencies and operational turnarounds, Garg argues that radical boardroom changes are imperative to salvage shareholder value, rescue the stock price, and steer the company back toward profitability.
Main Facts: The Battle for Better’s Boardroom
The unfolding corporate drama centers on a formal challenge delivered to Better’s board of directors late Thursday evening. Garg, who retains his position as a board director and remains the company’s single largest voting shareholder, has officially retained prominent defense attorney Alex Spiro to orchestrate the shareholder action.
According to communications sent to the board, Garg has secured binding declarations from shareholders representing a majority of Better’s total voting power. These declarations are not merely symbolic; under corporate governance frameworks, they grant Garg the legal leverage to force a special meeting of shareholders should the current board refuse to enact his requested structural reforms.
Garg’s blueprint for taking back the reins involves a sweeping restructuring of corporate leadership and a personal financial commitment:
- Executive Compensation Overhaul: Garg has pledged to work for a salary of just $1 until the company achieves sustained profitability.
- Capital Injection and Stock Buyback: He has proposed a $30 million personal stock repurchase plan, which includes buying back $10 million of Better’s publicly traded stock within the first five trading days of implementation.
- Boardroom Purge: The proposal demands the immediate resignation of all current directors with the exception of Garg himself, Michael Farello, and Hugh Frater.
- Leadership Succession: Garg plans to work alongside a newly constituted board to launch a formal, retained executive search for a permanent long-term CEO. Once a successor is named, Garg intends to transition into a specialized role as chairman or chief product and innovation officer.
Furthermore, Garg’s strategic roadmap calls for the acceleration of cost-reduction initiatives, the scaling of the company’s proprietary "Tinman" artificial intelligence platform, and the finalized divestiture of Better’s U.K. banking business—a transaction projected to yield approximately $74 million in gross proceeds, pending regulatory clearance.
Chronology of Events: From Leadership Transition to Shareholder Revolt
The timeline leading up to Garg’s hostile boardroom maneuver highlights a period of intense turbulence within Better Home & Finance:
- August 10: Garg outlines his initial strategic proposals in a formal letter to the company’s board of directors, laying the groundwork for operational and governance shifts.
- Mid-August 2026: Better Home & Finance announces that board member Daniel Lewis will succeed Garg as the company’s interim chief executive officer. Following the announcement, Garg emphasizes to industry media that while he is stepping down from day-to-day executive duties, he remains the founder, a board member, and the dominant voting shareholder.
- Same Week (Mid-August 2026): Better releases its Q2 2026 financial earnings, revealing continued net losses and heightening investor anxiety amid a depressed stock valuation.
- Late August 2026 (Thursday Evening): Garg drops a legal and corporate bombshell, announcing through attorney Alex Spiro that he has successfully gathered signed declarations from a majority of the company’s voting shareholders. Garg’s legal team informs Better’s board that these declarations can be reviewed by outside counsel on an "attorneys’-eyes-only" basis to verify his voting majority.
Supporting Data: Operational Progress Versus Financial Reality
To justify his bid to depose current leadership, Garg points to a stark divergence between Better’s operational metrics—which show dramatic efficiency gains—and its persistent financial losses on Wall Street.
Financial Performance and Projections
During the second quarter of 2026, Better reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $14 million. The company’s financial disclosures indicate that this loss is projected to widen to between $15 million and $18 million in the third quarter of 2026. These figures represent a frustrating delay for investors; previous earnings reports had consistently guided that the company would achieve profitability by the conclusion of Q3 2026, following a grueling streak of 11 consecutive quarters in the red. Since its public market debut via its merger with Aurora Acquisition Corp. in 2023, Better’s stock has shed over 90% of its value.
Underlying Business Growth and Efficiency
Despite the bleak stock performance, Garg insists the underlying enterprise is stronger and more scalable than ever. Highlighting a multi-year corporate transformation, Garg notes that since the first quarter of 2024:
- Quarterly Revenue has surged more than 2.5 times, climbing from approximately $20 million in Q1 2024 to $54.7 million in Q2 2026.
- Funded Loan Volume has experienced parallel expansion, scaling from roughly $600 million to $1.67 billion over the same comparative period.
- Cost-to-Originate Metrics have plummeted dramatically. The average cost to produce a single mortgage loan has been slashed from roughly $12,000 down to less than $3,000.
Garg attributes these monumental efficiency gains directly to the rapid expansion and integration of Tinman, the company’s conversational AI credit-decision engine. According to Garg’s internal calculations, if not for macro-environmental disruptions—specifically supply chain and shipping shocks associated with the Strait of Hormuz—Better would currently be generating between $5 million and $10 million in positive adjusted EBITDA on a monthly basis.
"Better is at an inflection point," Garg stated in a recent release. "We spent years rebuilding this company around technology, dramatically lowering the cost to originate a mortgage, and putting Better in a position to scale."
Official Responses and Industry Perspectives
While Wall Street and corporate governance watchers analyze the legal implications of Garg’s shareholder declarations, reactions from within the broader Better ecosystem range from pragmatic dismissal to cautious indifference.
Ryan Grant, president of NEO Home Loans (powered by Better), publicly downplayed the significance of the executive power struggle, characterizing the high-stakes dispute as little more than organizational "noise" and boardroom "drama."
"We just can’t really concern ourselves with it right now," Grant noted in an interview. "We know exactly what we need to do to run a profitable organization. […] We have to continue on the path that we’re on."
Grant suggested that frontline operations remain insulated from executive-level turmoil, asserting that field personnel care little about the identity of the chief executive as long as core strategic priorities remain intact. "It’s almost indifferent at this point as to who the CEO is, as long as the CEO doesn’t change our existing prioritization," Grant said. "Both of them have their strengths. Both of them have their weaknesses, just like the rest of us."
Implications: What Lies Ahead for Better Home & Finance?
Garg’s aggressive strategy places the board of directors in an unenviable corner. With a majority of voting power formally aligned behind him, ignoring his demands could trigger a messy, highly public proxy battle or a forced special meeting of shareholders—outcomes that could inflict further damage on an already battered stock price.
Conversely capitulating to Garg’s ultimatum would mean executing a near-total purge of the board, accepting a fundamental restructuring of executive leadership, and welcoming back a founder whose past management style and public controversies previously drew intense regulatory and media scrutiny.
As the legal teams review the shareholder declarations and the board weighs its options, Better Home & Finance remains suspended between two competing narratives: an operational success story powered by proprietary artificial intelligence and plunging origination costs, and a troubled public company caught in an endless loop of quarterly losses and founder-led palace intrigue. Whether Garg can successfully leverage his voting bloc to rewrite the company’s immediate future will depend entirely on how the remaining directors choose to navigate his ultimatum in the days ahead.