The $1.4 Billion Behind Darryl Cuttell’s IHRA Empire

Darana Hybrid, the Ohio contractor at the centre of Darryl Cuttell’s IHRA financial crisis, was paid approximately $1.4 billion by Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI between April 2024 and July 2026, according to the federal complaint SpaceXAI’s entities filed against the company on August 4. Powerboat News has read the complaint in full.

Powerboat News reported on August 1 that Darana had filed two Tennessee liens totalling $136.9 million against SpaceXAI’s Memphis data centre sites. The $1.4 billion figure did not appear anywhere in that lien paperwork. It surfaced only in SpaceXAI’s own lawsuit, and it is the clearest indication yet of the scale of money that has moved through Cuttell’s construction business while he was simultaneously buying racetracks, launching series and expanding IHRA into powerboat racing.

The figure is gross revenue paid to Darana, not profit and not Cuttell’s personal wealth. Cuttell has separately said Darana now owes close to $200 million to its own subcontractors and vendors, which indicates a substantial share of that $1.4 billion has already gone back out the door in payments for labour, materials and equipment.

IHRA itself is named as a defendant, not merely referenced. That entity currently owns IHRA’s Offshore Racing Series, bought from Powerboat P1 USA in October 2025. It also owned the F1 Powerboat Series from December 2025 until August 7, three days after this complaint was filed, when founders Tim Seebold and John Schubert reacquired the series from IHRA.

SpaceXAI alleges Darana overbilled it by between $500 million and $800 million. Their contract, the Master Services Agreement, capped Darana’s markup on subcontracted labour at 10 per cent above its own cost. According to the complaint, Darana instead billed CTC a uniform rate for all labour, whether performed by its own staff or by subcontractors, at markups typically running 200 to 300 per cent above what it paid subcontractors, and at times as high as 880 per cent. Darana employed only 50 to 70 of its own workers, according to the complaint, and used subcontractors for the bulk of the physical work.

The complaint says CTC only learned the subcontractor rates by accident, through data Darana supplied for tax credit purposes, which showed Darana paying subcontractors between $21.60 and $112.50 an hour while billing CTC between $125 and $245 an hour for the same labour. CTC says it has formally requested Darana’s underlying billing records under the contract’s audit clause since May 2026, and that Darana has refused to provide them.

Darana’s claimed exposure is larger than the $136.9 million covered in our August 1 story. The company has told CTC it is owed $136,892,782.78 for Tennessee work, plus undisclosed amounts for Mississippi work, which brings its total claim close to the $570 million figure Cuttell gave the Daily Memphian on July 31.

Cuttell separately stood to receive a $28.5 million equity incentive under the contract, tied to GPU commissioning milestones. A February 2026 amendment split that award, reassigning one third to an unnamed Darana employee and leaving Cuttell with the rest. The complaint alleges Cuttell’s remaining share is forfeited because it vested only if Darana worked exclusively for CTC on data centre projects through April 2027, a condition the complaint says Darana and Cuttell broke by doing work for IHRA.

The complaint says Darana billed CTC for more than a dozen invoices tied to IHRA properties, including its Ohio headquarters and two other addresses. One example: roughly $88,000 of safety equipment, including vests and goggles from a supplier called White Cap, was shipped to IHRA’s headquarters in Hamilton, Ohio, but billed to CTC as a data centre expense.

After CTC terminated the contract for cause on June 23, it agreed to advance Darana $44,394,472.54 on July 2 to cover materials Darana had procured through DESCO, a separate Darana affiliate also owned by Cuttell, for suppliers CTC said were critical to keeping construction moving. The complaint alleges Darana did not forward the money as agreed.

The complaint also brings Lanham Act trademark claims on behalf of xAI against Cuttell and IHRA, alleging IHRA staff wore jackets bearing both IHRA and xAI trademarks at an industry event in December 2025 and at IHRA shows through at least March 2026, without authorisation. The complaint states directly that there was and is no link between xAI and IHRA, citing public speculation, including a Reddit thread and an online article questioning whether IHRA’s track acquisitions were a “Trojan horse” for future data centre sites, as the harm that misuse caused.

Powerboat News reported in April, separately, that Cuttell’s Darana clients include SpaceX and Tesla alongside xAI, and found no evidence at that time of any direct Musk investment in IHRA. The complaint’s denial reaches the same conclusion independently.

Cuttell has denied the allegations. In the same July 31 Daily Memphian interview that produced the $570 million figure:

It’s all BS right now. I mean, it’s just smoke and mirrors.

Cuttell maintained that Darana’s labour rates were mutually agreed at the outset of the contract. The complaint itself cites that same interview as a separate alleged breach, arguing Cuttell disclosed confidential contract and payment details to the press in violation of the MSA. None of the allegations from either side have been tested in court, and Darana disputes SpaceXAI’s account of the relationship.

All three defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim on August 27. The substance of that motion is not yet available.

The financial dispute has coincided with visible strain across IHRA’s operations, powerboat racing included. Powerboat News has reported separately on IHRA’s 2026 Offshore Racing Series, which ended in July after the Mercury Racing Midwest Challenge in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was cancelled, and on the IHRA F1 Powerboat Series, which completed a shortened five-round season, down from an originally planned eight, before returning to its founders in August. Both the offshore and F1 cuts were announced on June 30 alongside reductions to IHRA’s drag racing and outlaw drag boat schedules, all citing budget issues that had emerged earlier in the season.

Maple Grove Raceway in Pennsylvania, one of the more significant tracks in Cuttell’s land-based portfolio, closed on August 17 for what the track described as “strategic refocusing, restructuring, and regrouping,” with no reopening date given. A prospective sale of IHRA to Richard Freeman’s Elite Motorsports fell through in late July; Freeman has said Cuttell told him by phone the organisation had already been sold to someone else, and that buyer has not been identified.