Sam Altman’s iris-scanning startup, Tools for Humanity, publicly announced a partnership with Bruno Mars’ world tour in April 2026 — a partnership that Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation say was never discussed, let alone agreed upon.
At a Tools for Humanity event on April 17, 2026, in San Francisco, the company’s chief product officer, Tiago Sada, announced a new product called Concert Kit — designed to let identity-verified users purchase concert tickets and access VIP experiences. Sada stated the product would roll out during Bruno Mars’ Romantic Tour. A company blog post echoed the claim, stating that “verified humans will have exclusive access to VIP suite experiences at select stops” of the Bruno Mars World Tour.
Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation told WIRED in a joint statement that the partnership “does not exist” and that Tools for Humanity never approached them. “We first learned that our tour was being used to promote their project after their keynote made those initial claims,” the statement read.
Tools for Humanity subsequently edited the event video and blog post, replacing the Bruno Mars reference with a claim that Concert Kit will instead roll out on the 2027 European tour of Jared Leto’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars. A company spokesperson confirmed to WIRED on Wednesday 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 originally named Mars as a partner.
Tools for Humanity was cofounded in 2019 by Altman and German entrepreneur Alex Blania. The company uses blockchain technology and a physical iris-scanning orb, launched in 2023, to verify human identity in online environments. The Concert Kit announcement was part of a broader “Lift Off” event where executives from Tinder, Zoom, and DocuSign also appeared to discuss expanding their work with the startup.
The false partnership claim carries additional complications given the parties involved. Live Nation owns Ticketmaster, and Tools for Humanity’s press materials explicitly positioned Concert Kit as a solution to Ticketmaster’s bot problem — referencing the 3.5 billion system requests Ticketmaster faced during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour presale. The US Federal Trade Commission was reported in September to be investigating Ticketmaster over whether it had done enough to keep bots off its platform. Anderson .Paak, who appeared at the Tools for Humanity event to criticize bots, is also set to tour with Bruno Mars under his DJ Pee .Wee moniker.
The incident may add to the challenges Tools for Humanity already faces in building credibility. The company has struggled to gain government acceptance of its technology as a privacy-safe method of human identification.
Source: Business Latest