OpenAI Slams Robinhood’s Unauthorized ’OpenAI Tokens’—No Equity, No Approval, Just Hype

Robinhood's latest crypto stunt backfires as OpenAI publicly disavows its so-called 'OpenAI tokens.' The AI giant confirms zero equity backing—and worse, no permission was ever granted.

Another day, another brokerage trying to ride the AI hype train. This time, Robinhood's demo stock gets caught in the crossfire—turns out you can't just slap 'AI' on anything and expect retail investors to bite. Well, most of the time.

OpenAI's statement cuts through the noise: no partnership, no endorsement, just another case of fintechs playing fast and loose with branding. Meanwhile, Robinhood users left holding the bag on yet another vaporware asset. Some things never change.

Tokenized-stock pilot spurs confusion

OpenAI’s comment follows Robinhood’s June 30 event in Cannes, France, where CEO Vlad Tenev demonstrated a tokenized stock trade for an “OpenAI” position on the broker’s forthcoming layer-2 blockchain. 

Robinhood said the network, built with Arbitrum technology, will let eligible European users trade more than 200 US equities and exchange-traded funds 24/7 with no commissions or spreads. The shares will be converted into on-chain tokens for transfer and settlement.

The presentation helped push Robinhood’s class-A shares up about 11% to a record $92, extending a month-long rally of roughly 34%. 

Market chatter soon began treating the demo asset as de facto OpenAI equity, despite the company remaining privately held.

Push for tokenized stocks

Robinhood’s initiative arrives amid a broader campaign to shift conventional equities onto public blockchains.

In late June, Dinarifor a subsidiary, positioning it to distribute its tokenized “dShares” to US brokerages after completing SEC onboarding. 

The firm already issues blockchain-recorded shares to non-US users on Coinbase’s Base network and states that it will settle future trades on a public chain while routing orders through registered market centers. 

Kraken has meanwhile launched, and Coinbase has requested clearance from the SEC. 

Proponents contend that putting equities on-chain trims clearing fees, shrinks settlement times to NEAR real-time, and enables continuous trading.