Tokenized fairness choices for OpenAI being supplied to Robinhood customers in Europe usually are not formally approved by the corporate, the AI large stated in a social media submit.
“These ‘OpenAI tokens’ usually are not OpenAI fairness. We didn’t associate with Robinhood, weren’t concerned on this, and don’t endorse it,” OpenAI posted on X. “Any switch of OpenAI fairness requires our approval — we didn’t approve any switch.”
Earlier this week, Robinhood introduced it was launching tokenized inventory buying and selling based mostly on the Arbitrum blockchain to its customers in Europe. As CoinDesk reported earlier, customers can have entry to 200 equities and ETFs, in addition to a secondary marketplace for fairness in scorching startups like OpenAI and SpaceX.
The concept of tokenized fairness in not-yet public firms is nothing new.
In 2018, a blockchain startup referred to as Swarm stated it might quickly offer tokenized shares in startups — together with Robinhood.
CoinDesk reported on the time that most of the firms Swarm claimed it might offer fairness in pushed again and stated such a sale could be unauthorized however Swarm stated every thing got here from “permitted secondary market transactions.”
Robinhood’s present tokenized providing, it is unclear the place the supply of fairness is. There’s some hypothesis that the fairness represents curiosity in OpenAI shares which have been already acquired by way of approved channels, based mostly on feedback made by Robinhood’s CEO.
Hypothesis:
Through the presentation, Vlad particularly talked about having a relationship with a rich investor with OpenAI / SpaceX shares.
These shares might seemingly nonetheless be underneath the unique traders title (both a person, or an entity), which OpenAI has already… https://t.co/bfskaDWf5O
— David Hoffman (@TrustlessState) July 2, 2025
Others have warned that OpenAI — and different startups — could be effectively inside their rights to not honor the sale.
This highlights one other danger on the non-public firm facet I did not tackle yesterday, however we regularly see in these secondary markets. There is no such thing as a requirement for these firms to honor the sale of the fairness you suppose you personal – in truth I stated lately at a non-public convention that I… https://t.co/nyzhjfgXwV
— Rob Hadick ＞|＜ (@HadickM) July 2, 2025
“I count on this pure rigidity to end in extra non-public firms simply cancelling fairness gross sales altogether for many who violate their shareholders’ agreements,” Dragonfly Normal Companion Rob Hadick posted on X.
Robinhood didn’t reply to a request for remark from CoinDesk.