Robinhood's new Ventures Fund lets retail investors buy shares in private tech giants like OpenAI.

Robinhood launched its Ventures Fund I, a publicly traded fund on the NYSE, allowing over 150,000 retail investors to invest in private tech companies such as Stripe, Oura, Databricks, and OpenAI. CEO Vlad Tenev highlights this fund as a way to democratize access to large private companies, which are valued in the hundreds of billions and often delay going public. The fund operates like a venture capital firm but offers daily liquidity, no accreditation requirements, and only a management fee without the typical profit carry. This initiative aims to let retail investors participate earlier in private rounds, potentially benefiting from significant growth before IPOs.