Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is touting the success of the fintech’s new Ventures Fund I, which permits retail buyers to spend money on personal tech firms like Stripe, Oura, Databricks, OpenAI, and others, by way of a publicly-traded fund listed on the NYSE. “We had one thing like over 150,000 retail buyers take part within the IPO, so it’s fairly democratized,” famous Tenev, in an interview at The Wall Avenue Journal’s “Way forward for Every thing” convention this week.
The fund, which launched in March, arrives at a time when the time period “unicorn,” which as soon as referred to the uncommon billion-dollar startup, has change into outdated. When AI mannequin suppliers like OpenAI and Anthropic are elevating capital at valuations of $850+ billion to $900 billion, one other phrase moreover “unicorn” is required.
“We name them frontier firms,” mentioned Tenev, explaining how Robinhood differentiates these bigger, personal firms from different startups.
“There are personal firms which are elevating capital at valuations within the excessive lots of of billions. You’re going to see, maybe, a number of personal firms stepping into the trillions [in valuation] earlier than the IPO — earlier than retail buyers can take part,” he mentioned.
Robinhood’s preliminary fund has publicity to many tech firms which have but to go public, including most recently OpenAI, which joins Mercor, Ramp, Airwallex, Increase, and others.
Tenev believes the brand new fund is sensible as a part of Robinhood’s broader mission to democratize entry to markets for retail buyers.
Initially, the corporate did this by way of its zero-commission trades, which considerably elevated retail participation within the public markets. Now it sees investing in massive, personal firms as the subsequent step.
“You possibly can consider [the new fund] as a publicly traded enterprise capital agency with day by day liquidity. No accreditation necessities and no carry,” Tenev mentioned within the interview. “So only a aggressive administration price, no carry — which, for these of you accustomed to enterprise capital, usually, if you spend money on a fund as an LP, you pay a administration price, however there’s additionally a carry of usually round 20%, which suggests 20% of your earnings go to the fund supervisor.”
Tenev believes that, as a result of measurement of those firms, retail buyers ought to be capable of get in sooner than the IPO — particularly given what number of firms are selecting to attend to go public.
“The aspiration is, in case you’re an organization elevating a seed spherical and a Sequence A spherical — so, simply first capital — retail ought to be a giant chunk of that spherical, very similar to it now’s within the public markets,” Tenev mentioned. “And we must always let these individuals in on the floor ground, in order that they’ll really profit from this potential appreciation that’s more and more taking place within the personal markets,” he added.
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