Robinhood's OpenAI stake

Robinhood’s venture fund bought about $75 million of OpenAI stock on April 17, giving retail investors a new indirect way to own a slice of the company. (finance.yahoo.com) Robinhood Ventures Fund I, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RVI, disclosed the purchase on April 22. Robinhood said the fund bought common stock and called OpenAI one of RVI’s largest positions so far. (finance.yahoo.com) RVI is a closed-end fund, which means investors buy shares of the fund on an exchange rather than buying the private company directly. Robinhood launched the product in February and said it was built to give non-accredited investors exposure to private companies such as Databricks, Revolut, Oura and Ramp. (robinhood.com) The OpenAI purchase lands three weeks after OpenAI said it closed a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion post-money valuation. That makes Robinhood’s stake small relative to OpenAI’s size, but large enough to stand out inside a newly listed retail-focused fund. (openai.com, cnbc.com) Robinhood has been arguing for months that private markets should be easier for everyday investors to reach. In its February launch post, the company said the number of U.S. listed companies fell from about 7,000 in 2000 to about 4,000 in 2024 while private-company value climbed past $10 trillion. (robinhood.com) The fund’s structure also explains the appeal. Robinhood says investors do not need to be accredited to buy RVI, and the shares trade daily on an exchange even though the fund itself can hold illiquid private-company stakes for the long term. (robinhood.com, robinhood.com) The deal also comes after friction between the two companies last summer over Robinhood’s plan to offer tokenized OpenAI shares in Europe. CNBC reported that OpenAI and Sam Altman said those tokens did not represent actual equity in the company. (cnbc.com) This time, Robinhood says the fund bought actual common stock, not tokens tied to stock. That gives Robinhood a cleaner answer to a question retail investors have been asking for years: how to get exposure to fast-growing companies before an initial public offering. (finance.yahoo.com, robinhood.com)