OpenAI Clarifies Stance on Robinhood’s Restricted EU Token Distribution

Key Points: OpenAI issued a statement on Wednesday clarifying that OpenAI tokens distributed to European Union users via Robinhood are not equity and require approval for transfer. Concurrently, Musk offered a scathing assessment.

Principal Distribution Clarified

OpenAI issued a statement on Wednesday𪾔 clarifying that OpenAI tokens given to EU Robinhood users “do not represent equity” in the company. Company representatives asserted disengagement from the Robinhood program and explicitly stated, “We did not approve any transfer. Please be careful.”

Robinhood’s Justification: The trading platform distributed $5 worth of OpenAI and SpaceX tokens to “eligible European customers” on Monday, as detailed in a statement to Cointelegraph. Robinhood acknowledged the gifts and stated these tokens offer “retail investors indirect exposure to private markets” via assets held in a special purpose vehicle.

This distribution formed part of Robinhood’s broader initiative into tokenized real-world asset (“RWA”) trading, announced in May 2025. The company recently activated its layer-2 blockchain network to facilitate these tokenized equity trades.

Robinhood Event Photo — Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s crypto head, spoke at Consensus 2025 earlier this year. *(Source: Cointelegraph)*

Musk Offers Critical Assessment

This week, OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk took to social media to criticize the program. “Your ‘equity’ is fake,” Musk wrote, expressing persistent concerns about OpenAI’s corporate shift from its originally envisioned nonprofit, mission-driven model to one prioritizing profit.

Musk resigned from OpenAI’s board in 2018, citing these diverging paths, and has subsequently filed lawsuits alleging breaches of OpenAI’s charter and misuse of charitable assets.

Context for Robinhood’s Ambitious RWA Push

The $5 worth (“$5 worth” mentions were part of the quoted Robinhood text. See just above.) of OpenAI/SpaceX tokens, provided to eligible EU customers, marks Robinhood’s ongoing effort to penetrate the RWA tokenization market. An image shows Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev addressing participants at an event in Cannes, France.

Robinhood’s VP, Johann Kerbrat (as quoted previously), highlighted tokenization’s potential to promote “financial inclusion” by extending access to complex asset classes like private equity through fractional ownership.

Integration of RWA into exchanges like Robinhood reflects a wider crypto industry trend blurring traditional finance (TradFi) and digital finance (DeFi) lines, noted Kerbrat.

Vlad Tenev has promoted crypto’s potential to serve as a financial system backbone. Tokenization opens traditional assets like corporate bonds and REITs to broader markets and addresses barriers to entry traditionally faced by less affluent investors.