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Retail investors are famously locked out of the startup world. Robinhood is attempting to change that by allowing the general public to invest in a portfolio of what it calls \u201csome of the most exciting private companies operating today.\u201d<\/p>\n
To do this, the company that pioneered the commission-free brokerage model has secured access to eight startups\u2014including Databricks, Stripe, Mercor, and Oura\u2014grouping them into a vehicle called Robinhood Ventures Fund I. The fund, which also includes Ramp, Airwallex, Revolut, and Boom, set out last month with an ambitious $1 billion target, but demand for this novel way of investing in private companies was lower than expected.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Robinhood announced the fund had raised $<\/strong>658.4 million \u2014 which could reach $705.7 million if underwriters exercise their full allotment. The shares, priced at $25 in the offering, began trading on Friday and closed the day at $21, a 16% decline.<\/p>\n RVI\u2019s reception on Wall Street stands in stark contrast to another attempt to give individual investors exposure to buzzy startups. When Destiny Tech100 \u2014 a publicly traded, closed-end fund holding stakes in 100 venture-backed companies including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Discord \u2014 direct-listed on the NYSE in March 2024, its shares surged<\/a> from a reference price of $4.84 to an opening trade of $8.25, eventually closing its first day at $9.00.<\/p>\n Destiny Tech100 has kept climbing since its public debut. The fund closed trading on Friday at $26.61, a 33% premium to its net asset value of $19.97<\/a>, meaning its shares trade well above the actual value of its underlying holdings.<\/p>\n So what explains why retail investors aren\u2019t nearly as excited about Robinhood\u2019s fund as they are about Destiny Tech 100? The most likely explanation is RVI\u2019s lack of exposure to the companies widely expected to go public at enormous valuations: OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX.<\/p>\n Robinhood is looking to address this. RVI intends to add more startups to the fund, eventually aiming to hold what Robinhood Ventures President Sarah Pinto described to TechCrunch as \u201c15 to 20 of the best late-stage growth companies out there.\u201d \u00a0The company\u2019s CFO, Shiv Verma,\u00a0told Axios Pro<\/a>\u00a0on Friday that<\/span> Robinhood is eyeing exposure to OpenAI.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> But securing access to these high-profile companies is far from straightforward. Robinhood is aiming to get directly onto their cap tables directly through primary capital raises or secondary share sales \u2014 and that\u2019s difficult even for a firm with deep roots in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n A cap table \u2014 the official record of who owns equity in a company \u2014 is closely guarded at most high-profile startups, and winning a spot on one requires either being invited by the company or purchasing shares from existing investors with the company\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to get into any of these companies, and the investment rounds are very expensive,\u201d acknowledged Pinto.<\/p>\n That is just one of the reasons democratizing private markets is easier said than done, and why the companies most retail investors actually want to own remain, for now, out of reach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n