Robinhood Launches Second Retail Venture Fund Amid AI Startup Boom
Just two months after debuting its first venture fund on the stock market, Robinhood is moving forward with a second. The company has filed a confidential registration for RVII, a necessary regulatory step that allows it to navigate the approval process before publicly revealing the fund’s details.
Expanding Investment Horizons with RVII
Unlike the inaugural fund, which currently holds stakes in 10 late-stage companies — including notable names like Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Mercor, OpenAI, Oura, Ramp, Revolut, and Stripe — RVII plans to broaden its scope. This new fund will invest in both growth-stage and early-stage startups, signaling a strategic shift toward younger companies that carry higher risk but also the potential for significant returns.
The fundraising target for RVII has not been disclosed yet. For context, Robinhood initially aimed to raise $1 billion for its first fund but ultimately fell several hundred million short of that goal. Despite this, the first fund has seen impressive performance, with its ticker, RVI, more than doubling since its March debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It opened at $21 per share and closed recently at $43.69, a surge likely driven by market enthusiasm around the AI potential of its portfolio companies.
Democratizing Access to Venture Capital
The core mission behind Robinhood’s venture funds addresses a persistent barrier in startup investing. Federal regulations restrict private company investment to “accredited” investors — those with a net worth exceeding $1 million or annual income above $200,000. This has traditionally excluded ordinary investors from the most lucrative early stages of company growth.
Robinhood’s funds, RVI and now RVII, aim to dismantle this barrier by enabling everyday investors to buy shares in a diversified portfolio of private startups through a standard brokerage account. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev described this model as “a publicly traded venture capital firm with daily liquidity,” emphasizing that there are no accreditation requirements and no carry fees — meaning Robinhood doesn’t take a percentage of the profits, unlike traditional venture capital firms.
Daily liquidity is a major innovation here: shares can be bought or sold on any open market day, contrasting sharply with conventional VC funds where capital is locked in for years.
The Future of Startup Fundraising and Retail Participation
Over recent years, the most valuable AI startups have transitioned from early speculative bets to companies valued in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars — with nearly all that growth happening in private markets, out of reach for most retail investors.
Tenev’s vision extends beyond just providing access to funds like RVI and RVII. At The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference, he expressed hopes that retail investors will eventually play a significant role even in the earliest rounds of startup funding — seed and Series A rounds — much like their participation in public markets today. This could enable retail investors to benefit from growth at the very ground floor, a space traditionally dominated by venture capital firms.
If successful, this approach could fundamentally alter startup fundraising dynamics, integrating retail investors alongside venture firms at the earliest and riskiest stages where the largest returns — and losses — often occur.
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