By Shubhangi Chowdhury
OpenAI has openly criticized Robinhood for its new token giveaway under the name “OpenAI tokens,” cautioning that these digital assets do not represent actual ownership or equity in the company. “We did not partner with Robinhood,” OpenAI said, “and do not endorse it.”
“These ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity,” said OpenAI’s newsroom post on the platform X. “We did not partner with Robinhood, were not involved in this, and do not endorse it. Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval—we did not approve any transfer. Please be careful.”
This clarification comes after Robinhood’s announcement earlier that it would start selling “tokenized shares” of private companies like OpenAI and SpaceX to people in the European Union. These tokens are meant to give regular people a way to invest in big private companies using blockchain technology.
Robinhood claimed the idea was to make investing more accessible. The announcement quickly boosted Robinhood’s stock to a record high.
But OpenAI and SpaceX don’t sell their stock to the public. That’s what makes them private. Only selected investors can buy shares so Robinhood’s tokens don’t actually give people ownership in these companies.
Responding to the criticism, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev posted on X, clarifying that the tokens aren’t actual shares but are meant to mirror share prices and offer investors indirect exposure. “Our giveaway plants a seed for something much bigger,” he wrote, noting that multiple private companies have already shown interest in being part of Robinhood’s tokenization push.
Even Robinhood spokesperson Rouky Diallo clarified to TechCrunch saying that OpenAI tokens were a “limited” giveaway “through Robinhood’s ownership stake in a special purpose vehicle (SPV)” to give access to users to private trade markets.
This means that Robinhood owns shares in something called an SPV which holds some shares of OpenAI. But owning shares in an SPV isn’t the same as owning OpenAI shares directly. It’s like owning a box that holds the real shares inside. So even though Robinhood is tying the token’s value to shares linked to OpenAI, the AI company itself says it never approved any transfer of its equity and doesn’t support this promotion at all. In other words, Robinhood might be using OpenAI’s name, but these tokens aren’t officially backed by OpenAI.
Robinhood is going big on crypto and blockchain. The company just launched stock tokens in Europe, which let people invest in U.S. companies like Apple or Nvidia without buying actual shares. These tokens track real stock prices and are available to trade almost all week.
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Robinhood also announced it is building its own blockchain to support future trading features, including 24/7 trading and holding assets like tokenized stocks. The trading platform also introduced crypto futures for European users and crypto staking (earning rewards for holding crypto like Ethereum and Solana) in both the U.S. and EU.