Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vladimir Tenev outlined the intent of the platform to listing “1000’s of” non-public corporations as tokenized shares. The assertion follows the controversy over tokenized shares of personal corporations Openai and SpaceX. The creators of ChatGpt went as far as to publicly condemn the providing.
Non-public corporations should not publicly accessible on inventory exchanges. Firms often entice funding from founders, enterprise capitalists, non-public fairness corporations, and typically angel traders and staff. Consequently, investments in these corporations are closed from the general public.
Robinhood's tokenized inventory merchandise accessible solely within the EU try to resolve that downside by permitting merchants to entry shares by means of their very own Ethereum Layer-2 community.
“We wish to have 1000’s of personal corporations on our platform. Bloomberg. “And really, since our announcement, I've had a number of enquiries (from From From) that wish to truly wish to entry retail, tokenize their shares and grow to be a part of this revolution.”
Robinhood CEO Vlad: “Tokenized shares are the largest innovation in 10 years!”
He highlights the retailer deserves entry to personal shares and highlights the robust demand for EU-compliant derivatives regardless of regulatory challenges.
Tokenization of RWA is inevitable and pure…pic.twitter.com/u7gmopt6x1
– Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) July 8, 2025
Numerous market predictors consider there’s a 51.6% likelihood that Robinhood will add at the very least one non-public firm as a inventory token by the top of the month.
(Disclosure: Myriad is a forecast market developed by Decrypt's mother or father firm Dastan.)
TENEV defined that Openai and SpaceX tokenized shares should not but tradeable. They had been handed out to customers by means of prizes. Nonetheless, earlier this month, it urged a backlash from the official Openai X account.
“We didn’t associate with Robin Hood, didn’t have interaction on this, and didn’t assist it,” Openai wrote to X:
Tenev stated that to ensure that Robinhood to concern tokenized shares, the corporate should both retain the underlying property themselves or keep a “conventional monetary enterprise.” He additionally defined that non-public corporations' shares are sometimes traded within the secondary market by institutional traders.
Which means that Robinhood is both retaining Openai's equity or affiliated with stockholders regardless of the dispute from the AI firm.
“The mechanisms range barely from property to property, whether or not it's a public inventory or a personal firm,” he stated.
The controversy prompted questions on how regulators view tokenized shares. TENEV stated the supply is feasible because of the “clear rules” of the European Union on spinoff crypto property. He added that Robinhood is assured that its providing is “to face up to the best scrutiny” and is in “steady debate” with regulators.
For now, Robinhood's tokenized stock is simply accessible within the EU. Nevertheless, the CEO stated the US shouldn’t be “too late” as he argues that the SEC has begun debating the subject.
