Robinhood Ventures Fund Crosses $1B In Market Cap: Retail Cheers OpenAI Bet

• Robinhood Ventures Fund I closed up more than 14% on Friday, ending the session at $39.13. 
• The fund has gained more than 86% since its listing. 
• The fund has gained significant attention after announcing an investment of about $75 million in OpenAI on April 17.

Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), the brokerage company’s inaugural fund that aims to give retail investors exposure to pre-IPO companies like OpenAI and Stripe, crossed the $1 billion market capitalization milestone on Friday.

Robinhood Markets Inc. (HOOD) CEO Vlad Tenev announced the milestone in a post on X. “When you tear down the gates, the market answers,” he said.

RVI closed up more than 14% on Friday, ending the session at $39.13. The fund has gained more than 86% since its listing on March 6, surpassing the returns from major indexes, including the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA).

“Thank you to the everyday investors claiming their seat at the table, and the frontier companies building alongside us. We’re just getting started,” Tenev added.

Betting Big On Private Plays

The fund has gained significant attention after announcing an investment of about $75 million in artificial intelligence company OpenAI on April 17, ahead of the company’s planned massive public listing later this year.

Earlier, in an exclusive interview with Stocktwits, Sarah Pinto Peyronel, President of Robinhood Ventures, added that the fund is in talks with multiple “highly valued” private firms. “The AI labs, the space companies, the defense companies, the consumer companies that retail investors love – we're talking to them all, we love them all, and we'd be honored to have them as part of RVI,” Peyronel had said at the time, prior to the OpenAI announcement.

Robinhood Ventures Fund I has also invested $14.6 million in Stripe and nearly $20 million in ElevenLabs, according to a March announcement. The fund also has stakes in the data intelligence platform Databricks, widely considered one of the strongest late-stage AI companies approaching the IPO window. The closed-end venture fund also has stakes in the fintech company Revolut, the AI startup Mercor, and the digital wallet Airwallex, among others.

Retail Stance On RVI

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around RVI has remained in the ‘bullish’ territory over the past 24 hours amid ‘normal’ message volumes.

One bullish user said, “Since adding OpenAI over 2 weeks ago it is waking up.”

Another user said, “Nice return since ipo.”

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