- The Robinhood Ventures Fund I made a tepid debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, listing at $22, down from its $25 issue price.
- The fund offers retail investors access to pre-IPO companies such as data intelligence platform Databricks, which currently accounts for the fund’s largest allocation.
- Robinhood Ventures President Sarah Pinto Peyronel told Stocktwits in an exclusive interview that the fund is not worried about the AI bubble impacting the companies in its portfolio.
Robinhood Ventures is likely to finalize its $14.6 million investment in payments firm Stripe within “days” after its Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI) debuted on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Friday.
“We’re hoping to close it very, very soon. We’re very eager,” said Sarah Pinto Peyronel, President of Robinhood Ventures, in an exclusive interview with Stocktwits’ Michele Steele. “In weeks, days, hopefully.”
According to Peyronel, the fund’s goal is to give retail investors access to pre-IPO companies. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that the fund currently holds stakes in Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, Mercor, Oura, Ramp, and Revolut.
Robinhood Ventures Fund I made a tepid debut listing at around $22 on Friday morning amid weakness in the broader stock market after President Donald Trump said there would be no deal with Iran except “unconditional surrender” as the U.S.-Israel-Iran war entered its seventh day.
At the time of writing, RVI’s stock was trading at around $22.25, or 11% lower than the issue price of $25. The closed-end fund is the first of its kind by Robinhood Ventures. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits regarding the fund trended in ‘extremely bullish’ territory amid ‘extremely high’ chatter.
Robinhood Not Concerned About AI Bubble Risk
According to the SEC filing, the fund plans to invest in five or more companies it considers “Frontier Companies,” with no single position exceeding 20% of assets at the time of purchase.
These companies can be in the U.S. or abroad and will focus on sectors such as AI, fintech, aerospace and defense, robotics, enterprise software, and consumer technology. The largest chunk of the investment has been directed toward the data intelligence platform Databricks, amounting to around $18.5 million.
When asked if Robinhood was worried about the AI bubble popping and impacting its holdings, Peyronel said that while there may be some volatility, the fund has a “fundamental long-term bullish view on all of these companies and also their ability to really power the switch to AI and this new artificial intelligence wave, in particular, companies like Databricks.”
“All of the companies in our portfolio, we think, are the disruptors, not the disrupted. And so we think it's a really great way to have exposure to kind of this new wave that's coming,” Peyronel told Stocktwits.
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