BNB Standard rings Nasdaq bell under a YZi Labs CEO, ending months of board struggle
Photo by Sami Keinänen via Flickr
- BNB Standard Corporation, formerly CEA Industries, rang the Nasdaq Opening Bell on Monday with new CEO Alex Odagiu.
- The new CEO was a former YZi Labs investment partner.
- The company holds 515,544 BNB tokens, about 93% of its assets.
BNB Standard Corporation (Nasdaq: BNC) rang the Nasdaq Opening Bell on Monday with Alex Odagiu, its new CEO.
Odagiu has only occupied his new role for a week and previously served as a YZi Labs investment partner.
Who is Alex Odagiu?
Alex Odagiu, who became chief executive just a week ago, rang the NASDAQ opening bell with the BNB Standard Corporation’s board and management team, according to Nasdaq’s event listing and a company press release. He used to be an investment partner at YZi Labs and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).
Odagiu’s path to CEO began with a fight over who controls the BNB standard board. YZi Labs, a firm linked to Changpeng Zhao (CZ) that was formerly known as Binance Labs, pushed for board control at the company in late 2025 and early 2026. At that time, it was still called by its former name, CEA Industries.
YZi asked the company’s shareholders to expand the board to 13 seats and choose its own directors.
An SEC filing shows YZi Labs owned about 9.4% of the stock, or 4,255,043 shares. It accused the board of the “continued destruction of stockholder value.”
The two sides settled on June 23, 2026. YZi Labs dropped its push and agreed to stand-still terms.
Ella Zhang, Odagiu and Matthew Roszak joined the board, and Odagiu became interim president while the board searched for a CEO. On October 19, 2026, the board named him chief executive.
Chief financial officer Brent Miller stayed on. Under the deal with YZi Labs, the company still has to add one more independent director.
What does BNB Standard own?
The company was called CEA Industries until September 29, 2026, when its new name took effect, but it has kept the BNC ticker. The name came from a five-day poll on X, where “BNB Standard” got about 47% of 5,799 votes.
CEA started out making nicotine vapes until a private placement of about $500 million in August 2025 turned it into a company that holds the BNB token. It now calls itself the largest corporate holder of BNB in the world.
The company’s first-quarter fiscal 2027 results show that as of July 31, 2026, it held 515,544 BNB tokens worth about $302.3 million, representing 93.1% of its total assets.
In the same quarter, BNB Standard Corporation booked a $15.3 million unrealized loss on its tokens, part of an $11.4 million net loss.
The company intends to run its own validator on BNB Chain that will be operated by a specialist provider under the company’s oversight. Staked tokens would be held by qualified custodians. However, the company has warned that rewards are not guaranteed and depend on network activity and uptime.
Other problems remain, like the lawsuit against 10X Capital, the firm that managed the BNC treasury. BNB Standard aims to cancel their asset management agreement with the suit. Ending that deal could have cost more than $100 million, and the case remains unresolved. The company has also disclosed a material weakness in its internal financial controls.
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FAQs
Who is the new CEO of BNB Standard?
Alex Odagiu, named chief executive on October 19, 2026. He was the company's interim president from June 2026 and previously worked as a YZi Labs investment partner and a Goldman Sachs investment banker.
How much BNB does BNB Standard hold?
As of July 31, 2026, the company held 515,544 BNB tokens valued at roughly $302.3 million, which made up 93.1% of its total assets, according to its first-quarter fiscal 2027 results.
What was the governance fight with YZi Labs about?
YZi Labs, the CZ-linked firm formerly called Binance Labs, launched a consent solicitation in late 2025 to reconstitute the board and criticized CEA's management and its ties to 10X Capital. The dispute ended with a June 23, 2026 cooperation agreement that added three directors, including Odagiu, and dropped YZi's proxy campaign.
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Hannah Collymore
Hannah is a writer and editor with nearly a decade of blog writing and event reporting experience in the crypto space. At Cryptopolitan, Hannah contributes to the news page, reporting and analyzing the latest developments in DeFi, RWA, crypto regulation, AI and frontier tech industries. She graduated from Arcadia university with a degree in Business Administration.
