Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vladimir Tenev outlined the intent of the platform to list “thousands of” private companies as tokenized stocks. The statement follows the controversy over tokenized stocks of private companies Openai and SpaceX. The creators of ChatGpt went so far as to publicly condemn the offering.
Private companies are not publicly available on stock exchanges. Companies usually attract investment from founders, venture capitalists, private equity companies, and sometimes angel investors and employees. As a result, investments in these companies are closed from the public.
Robinhood’s tokenized stock products available only in the EU are trying to solve that problem by allowing traders to access stocks through their own Ethereum Layer-2 network.
“We want to have thousands of private companies on our platform. Bloomberg. “And actually, since our announcement, I’ve had a lot of enquiries (from From From) that want to actually want to access retail, tokenize their stocks and become part of this revolution.”
Robinhood CEO Vlad: “Tokenized stocks are the biggest innovation in 10 years!”
He highlights the retailer deserves access to private stocks and highlights the strong demand for EU-compliant derivatives despite regulatory challenges.
Tokenization of RWA is inevitable and natural…pic.twitter.com/u7gmopt6x1
– Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) July 8, 2025
Countless market predictors believe there is a 51.6% chance that Robinhood will add at least one private company as a stock token by the end of the month.
(Disclosure: Myriad is a forecast market developed by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan.)
TENEV explained that Openai and SpaceX tokenized stocks are not yet tradeable. They were handed out to users through prizes. Still, earlier this month, it urged a backlash from the official Openai X account.
“We did not partner with Robin Hood, did not engage in this, and did not support it,” Openai wrote to X:
Tenev said that in order for Robinhood to issue tokenized shares, the company must either retain the underlying assets themselves or maintain a “traditional financial business.” He also explained that private companies’ stocks are often traded in the secondary market by institutional investors.
This means that Robinhood is either retaining Openai’s fairness or affiliated with stockholders despite the dispute from the AI company.
“The mechanisms vary slightly from property to property, whether it’s a public stock or a private company,” he said.
The controversy prompted questions about how regulators view tokenized stocks. TENEV said the offer is possible due to the “clear regulations” of the European Union on derivative crypto assets. He added that Robinhood is confident that its offering is “to withstand the highest scrutiny” and is in “continuous debate” with regulators.
For now, Robinhood’s tokenized inventory is only available in the EU. However, the CEO said the US should not be “too late” as he argues that the SEC has begun debating the topic.
