False Bruno Mars Partnership Announcement Sparks Controversy for Sam Altman’s Iris-Scanning Startup Tools for Humanity

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s biometric identity startup Tools for Humanity, a firm known for its eye-scanning human verification system, made a high-profile product launch announcement last week: its new offering Concert Kit, a tool built to let verified human users purchase concert tickets, would make its official debut on Bruno Mars’ global tour supporting his latest studio album The Romantic.

But just days later, Bruno Mars’ management team and Live Nation, the producer behind The Romantic Tour, pushed back forcefully on the claim. In a joint statement to WIRED released Tuesday, the two groups confirmed the supposed partnership “does not exist”, and that Tools for Humanity (TFH) never even reached out to discuss a collaboration.

The confusion traces back to TFH’s April 17 public event in San Francisco, where the company’s chief product officer Tiago Sada told attendees that TFH would partner with the tour to not only reserve ticket access exclusively for verified humans, but also roll out special “VIP experiences for confirmed human guests”. That claim was later repeated in an official TFH blog post, which read: “Concert Kit launches today and will roll out during the Bruno Mars World Tour featuring DJ Pee .Wee (aka Anderson .Paak), where verified humans will have exclusive access to VIP suite experiences at select stops.”

Both event footage of Sada’s comments and the original blog post have since been edited and re-published by TFH, which now says Concert Kit will instead launch on the 2027 European tour of Thirty Seconds to Mars, the rock band fronted by Jared Leto.

“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 shared in their joint statement. “We first learned that our tour was being used to promote their project after their keynote made those initial claims.” WIRED originally included the Bruno Mars partnership claim in its first report on the TFH event, and has since updated its coverage to correct the record.

A TFH spokesperson confirmed the mistake to WIRED in a Wednesday statement, acknowledging 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 explain why it incorrectly named Bruno Mars as a launch partner for the new product in the first place.

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Context on Tools for Humanity and Its Anti-Bot Mission

TFH was co-founded in 2019 by Altman and German entrepreneur Alex Blania, with a core goal of using blockchain technology to verify human identities in online spaces rife with scams and automated bot activity. In 2023, the company launched its physical iris-scanning “Orb” device, which pairs with a companion mobile app to confirm a user is a real person rather than an automated account.

While Live Nation and Bruno Mars’ team note they “have no opinions for or against their products”, TFH’s Concert Kit positions the startup as a direct challenger to Live Nation’s core ticketing business. Concert Kit is explicitly marketed as a solution to the chronic bot problem that has long plagued Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant owned by Live Nation. In September 2023, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission was investigating whether Ticketmaster had done enough to block bots from accessing its platform.

Adding an extra layer of intrigue to the mix-up: Anderson .Paak, who tours alongside Bruno Mars under his DJ alias DJ Pee .Wee, actually appeared as a guest speaker at TFH’s San Francisco event to endorse the company’s anti-bot mission. He told the crowd: “I fucking hate bots … they make everything really shitty. Especially for the fans.”

TFH did not shy away from calling out Ticketmaster’s well-documented public failures in its own press material, noting in last week’s announcement that “diehard Swifties will never forget the Eras Tour presale, where Ticketmaster faced 3.5 billion system requests in a single day, locking out millions of fans.”

The false Bruno Mars partnership was one of several big-name tie-ups announced at TFH’s “Lift Off” event, which was designed to legitimize the startup’s identity-verification technology by aligning it with well-known global brands. Executives from Tinder, Zoom, and DocuSign all used the event to announce expanded partnerships with the startup.

For years, TFH has faced major regulatory headwinds around the world, as policymakers and privacy advocates have raised ongoing questions about whether the company’s biometric data collection system can truly keep user information safe and protect personal privacy.