OpenAI isn't a publicly-traded company — yet, at least — and as such, the company's express written consent is necessary for the sale or transfer of its equity.
But that massive caveat has not, apparently, stopped sleazy operators from trying to rip would-be investors off with shady promises of buying into the red-hot artificial intelligence giant.
In a new blog post, OpenAI warned that there are bad actors out there attempting to make "unauthorized opportunities to gain access" to the company. In other words, in an amusingly convoluted situation, OpenAI is warning would-be investors not to invest in it.
The mechanics of these deals vary. The first method to buy into OpenAI is the direct and unsanctioned sale of company equity without permission. (Any such transfer attempts will, as the blog post noted, be "void," unless the seller "first obtains OpenAI's written consent.")
Another way to buy into a private company like OpenAI is via the unauthorized sale of stakes via special purpose vehicles, or SVPs, which are created so multiple stakeholders can buy into a company in one bulk transaction. In interviews with Business Insider, more than a dozen founders and investors said they've been overwhelmed by cold pitches for SVPs in companies like OpenAI and Anthropic; there's a spectrum of legitimacy to SVP schemes, but as a rule of thumb, it's a pretty dubious type of economic vehicle that often levy onerous fees or terms to move shares of hype-fueled stocks.
"It's a new version of the age-old sort of racket of charging people egregious fees for access to investments they may not otherwise have," Ankur Nagpal, founder of the personal finance company Carry, told BI. "Despite the fact that these investments, on average, don't outperform."
Leslie Feinzaig of the early-stage venture capital firm Graham and Walker likened this new SPV rush to the "wild west."
"AI is going to create multiple trillion-dollar companies, and there's just a lot of expectations and a lot of hype surrounding it," she said. "I have an assumption that there's a lot of grift."
While the Sam Altman-helmed company acknowledged in its post that "not every offer of OpenAI equity (or exposure to it) is problematic," there's still a good chance that whoever is attempting to sale might be trying to skirt the company's transfer rules.
"If so," the blog post continued, "the sale will not be recognized and carry no economic value to you."
Along with the potential for losing money, OpenAI also warned that such unauthorized transfers or sales "may also violate US federal or state securities laws, which impose significant restrictions on transfers of privately offered equity."
"A buyer or seller may have liability for those violations," the post said, "and the transfer may be rescinded."
The company added that it intends "to vigorously enforce the transfer restrictions applicable to any direct or indirect sales of our equity," and asked people to report any such pitches to OpenAI directly.
Obviously the desire to buy into OpenAI is huge, but as angel investor Sarah Guo put it in a recent X post, buying into sketchy SVPs is not a prudent way to allocate funds.
"The feeding frenzy for ownership in the AI labs has spawned a set of bottom feeding multi layered SPV brokers that have no relationship with the company, and straight up grifters," she posted earlier this month. "Careful of that nonsense."
Share This Article