Robinhood’s Private Startup Fund Could Open the Floodgates

A soon to be listed Robinhood fund that invests in private startups could lay a path for Silicon Valley—including VC firms—to raise more money from individual investors. 

Robinhood is raising $1 billion for the fund, which has the New York Stock Exchange ticker of RVI. The fund, Robinhood says, will invest in “best-in-class” private companies like Stripe, Databricks and Ramp. Those companies are largely off limits to everyday traders that use Robinhood to invest, a barrier that has perpetuated the “greatest longstanding inequity in private markets today,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in the fund’s roadshow launch video on Tuesday. For a 2% management fee, Tenev wants to solve the inequity.