OpenAI Warns That Tokenized Equity Sale on Robinhood Is Unauthorized

Tokenized fairness choices for OpenAI being provided to Robinhood customers in Europe usually are not formally licensed by the corporate, the AI large mentioned in a social media submit.

“These ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity. We did not partner with Robinhood, were not involved in this, and do not endorse it,” OpenAI posted on X. “Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval — we did not approve any transfer.”

Earlier this week, Robinhood introduced it was launching tokenized inventory buying and selling primarily based on the Arbitrum blockchain to its customers in Europe. As CoinDesk reported earlier, customers could have entry to 200 equities and ETFs, in addition to a secondary marketplace for fairness in sizzling startups like OpenAI and SpaceX.

The concept of tokenized fairness in not-yet public corporations is nothing new.

In 2018, a blockchain startup known as Swarm mentioned it could quickly offer tokenized shares in startups — together with Robinhood.

CoinDesk reported on the time that lots of the corporations Swarm claimed it could offer fairness in pushed again and mentioned such a sale could be unauthorized however Swarm mentioned the whole lot got here from “approved secondary market transactions.”

Looking at Robinhood’s present tokenized providing, it is unclear the place the supply of fairness is. There is a few hypothesis that the fairness represents curiosity in OpenAI shares which were already acquired through licensed channels, primarily based on feedback made by Robinhood’s CEO.

Others have warned that OpenAI — and different startups — could be nicely inside their rights to not honor the sale.

“I expect this natural tension to result in more private companies just cancelling equity sales altogether for those who violate their shareholders’ agreements,” Dragonfly General Partner Rob Hadick posted on X.

Robinhood didn’t reply to a request for remark from CoinDesk.