Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says it is “completely relevant” that the so-called tokenized stocks in OpenAI and SpaceX trading platforms are not technically fair for the company.
This comes after Openai has raised concerns about the product. It is designed to expose European Union users to a variety of US stocks, including private companies with less liquids than publicly available companies.
Openai said last week that the Robinhood share tokens did not represent the company’s shares, and in a post on X, “An approval is required for the transfer of Openai equity — it did not approve the transfer.”
Robinhood said the Openai stock token is “enabled by an interest in Robinhood’s ownership in a special purpose vehicle.”
“It’s true that these are technically unfair,” Tenev, who co-founded Robinhood with fellow entrepreneur Baiju Batt in 2013, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Tuesday, reflecting his initial response to Openai’s concerns.
TENEV said Openai’s complex company structure allows institutional investors to get to touch the company through “a variety of equipment, including equity for events that would later be converted to a for-profit organization.”
Openai was originally founded as a non-profit organization. But since then, it has evolved to include for-profits owned by nonprofits.
“I don’t think it’s entirely related to that, in itself, that it’s not technically an equity measure,” he said. “The key is that retail customers have the opportunity to be exposed to this asset” – he added, due to the disruptive nature of AI, even if it’s a private company.
On Monday, the Bank of Lithuania, the leading authority on Robinhood in the European Union, told CNBC it was “waiting an explanation” about the company’s stock token structure, following Openai’s statement last week.
“Only after receiving and assessing this information we can assess the legality and compliance of these specific devices,” Giedriusšniukas, a spokesman for the Bank of Lithuania, told CNBC. “Information for investors must be provided in a language other than clear, fair, non-imitation.”
In response to comments from Lithuanian regulators, TENEV said Robinhood was “pleasant to continue answering questions from our regulators.”
“It’s new so regulators will want to see it and we built this program in a way that we believe will withstand surveillance and hopefully it will be scrutinized as a large, innovative player in this space,” he told CNBC.
