Robinhood CEO Wants ‘Thousands’ of Private Companies Tokenized on Platform

Vladimir Tenev, co-founder and CEO of Robinhood, has outlined the platform’s intent to list “thousands” of private companies as tokenized stocks. The statement follows controversy regarding its tokenized stocks for private firms OpenAI and SpaceX. The ChatGPT creator went so far as to publicly denounce the offering.

Private companies are not publicly traded on stock exchanges. The firms typically attract investment from founders, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and also sometimes angel investors, and employees. As a result, investment in these companies is closed off from the public.

Robinhood’s tokenized stock offering, available only in the EU, seeks to solve that pain point by giving traders access to the stocks via its own Ethereum layer-2 network.

“We’d like to have thousands of private companies on the platform, accessible to retail,” Tenev said in an interview with Bloomberg. “And, actually, since our announcement, I’ve had a deluge of inquiries [from] private companies that actually want access to retail, to have their shares tokenized, to be part of this revolution.”

Predictors on Myriad Markets believe there is a 51.6% likelihood that Robinhood will add at least one more private company as a stock token by the end of the month.

(Disclosure: Myriad is a prediction market developed by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan.)

Tenev explained the OpenAI and SpaceX tokenized stocks aren’t tradable yet—they were handed out to users through a giveaway. Still, it prompted backlash from the official OpenAI X account earlier this month.

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

For Robinhood to issue tokenized stocks, Tenev said, the company is required to either hold the underlying asset itself or have a “traditional financial business” hold it for them. He also explained that shares in private companies are often traded on a secondary market by institutional investors.

That would imply Robinhood either holds OpenAI equity—despite disputes from the AI firm—or it is partnered with equity holders.

“The mechanism slightly differs depending on the asset, whether it’s a public stock or a private company,” he said, “but the intent is for the tokens to be backed by exposure to the underlying asset, in pretty much all cases.”

The controversy also prompted questions over how regulators see the tokenized stocks. Tenev said that the offering is possible due to the European Union’s “clear regulations” for derivative crypto assets. He added that Robinhood is confident that its offering will “withstand the highest form of scrutiny” and is in “ongoing discussions” with regulators.

For now, Robinhood’s tokenized stocks are only available in the EU. But the CEO noted that the U.S. shouldn’t be “too far behind” as, he claims, the SEC has started to have discussions on the topic.