Sam Altman's Biometric Startup Falsely Claims Bruno Mars Partnership That Never Existed

Sam Altman's Biometric Startup Falsely Claims Bruno Mars Partnership That Never Existed

Tools for Humanity announced a concert ticketing collaboration with the pop star that management and promoters say never occurred.

Sam Altman's iris-scanning company, Tools for Humanity, unveiled what it described as a partnership with Bruno Mars last week, claiming its new Concert Kit product would debut on the musician's world tour promoting his latest album, The Romantic. Yet on Tuesday, representatives from Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation, the tour's promoter, issued a joint statement to WIRED denying any such arrangement existed and asserting they had never been contacted about any potential collaboration.

How the Confusion Unfolded

The discrepancy emerged following a Tools for Humanity presentation on April 17 in San Francisco. During the event, chief product officer Tiago Sada announced that Concert Kit would roll out during the Bruno Mars World Tour, offering verified users exclusive access to VIP experiences at select venues. The company reinforced this claim in a blog post, which specifically mentioned the tour would feature DJ Pee Wee, the stage name of Anderson .Paak.

Following the backlash, Tools for Humanity subsequently edited and redistributed both the event video and blog post. The updated materials now reference a 2027 European tour by Thirty Seconds to Mars, fronted by Jared Leto, as the platform's launch venue instead.

Official Denials

"To be clear, we were never approached by TFH, nor were we in any discussions regarding a partnership or tour access," Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation spokesperson Maya Sarin stated jointly to WIRED. "We first learned that our tour was being used to promote their project after their keynote made those initial claims."

Jess Montejano, a Tools for Humanity spokesperson, later confirmed to WIRED that the startup "does not have any agreement with Bruno Mars to test or feature Concert Kit, and there is no association or affiliation with the artist or his tour." The company declined to provide any explanation for why it initially announced Mars as a partner.

Context: The Bot Problem in Concert Ticketing

Concert Kit is designed to address widespread bot abuse on ticketing platforms by allowing verified humans to purchase tickets. The timing of this announcement carries particular significance, as Live Nation's Ticketmaster subsidiary faces ongoing scrutiny. In September, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission was investigating Ticketmaster for potentially inadequate safeguards against bot activity.

During the Tools for Humanity event, Anderson .Paak appeared to endorse the anti-bot initiative, telling the audience, "I fucking hate bots … they make everything really shitty. Especially for the fans." Notably, .Paak is set to tour as DJ Pee Wee alongside Bruno Mars.

Tools for Humanity also took aim at Ticketmaster in its official press release, referencing the Eras Tour presale chaos when "Ticketmaster faced 3.5 billion system requests in a single day, locking out millions of fans."

About Tools for Humanity

Founded in 2019 by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and German entrepreneur Alex Blania, Tools for Humanity employs blockchain technology to verify individuals in digital environments prone to fraud. The company launched a physical iris-scanning device, called an orb, in 2023, paired with a mobile application for identity verification.

The Bruno Mars announcement was part of a broader corporate outreach effort at Tools for Humanity's Lift Off event, where representatives from Tinder, Zoom, and Docusign committed to expanding their partnerships with the identity-verification platform. The company has previously faced challenges gaining governmental adoption of its technology as a privacy-respecting identification method.