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Just two months after listing its first venture fund on the stock market, Robinhood is preparing to launch a second. The company has filed a\u00a0confidential registration<\/a>\u00a0for RVII, a standard regulatory step that allows it to work through the approval process before making details public.<\/span> <\/p>\n Unlike its first fund, which currently holds stakes in 10 late-stage companies<\/a> \u2014 Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Mercor, OpenAI, Oura, Ramp, Revolut, and Stripe<\/span> \u2014 RVII will cast a wider net, investing in growth-stage and early-stage startups.<\/span> It\u2019s a meaningful distinction, given that early-stage startups are younger and carry more risk but also offer the potential for greater returns.<\/p>\n The fundraising target for RVII has not yet been set, the company said in a blog post<\/a>. For its inaugural fund, Robinhood sought to raise $1 billion but ultimately fell several hundred million short<\/a> of that goal.<\/p>\n Despite the shortfall, the first fund has performed strongly. RVI \u2014 the ticker for Robinhood\u2019s first fund, which trades on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) \u2014 debuting on the NYSE at $21 a share in early March and has since more than doubled, closing on Monday at $43.69. Market enthusiasm for the AI prospects of the fund\u2019s underlying startups has likely fueled the stock\u2019s rise. <\/p>\n The premise behind both funds addresses a longstanding gap in who gets to invest in startups. Under federal rules, only \u201caccredited\u201d investors \u2014 those with a net worth exceeding $1 million or annual income above $200,000 \u2014 can put money into private companies. That has historically locked ordinary investors out of the earliest and most lucrative stages of a company\u2019s growth. RVI and now RVII, are designed to change that, letting anyone invest in a portfolio of private startups through a regular brokerage account.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can think of [Robinhood Ventures] as a publicly traded venture capital firm with daily liquidity. No accreditation requirements and no carry,\u201d Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0at The Wall Street Journal\u2019s Future of Everything conference last week. Daily liquidity means shares can be bought or sold any day the market is open, unlike traditional VC funds, where capital is locked up for years. No carry means Robinhood doesn\u2019t take a percentage of investment profits, as conventional venture firms typically do.<\/p>\n Over the past few years, the most valuable AI startups have gone from early bets to companies worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, and almost all of that appreciation has happened in the private markets, out of reach for most investors.<\/p>\n Tenev’s longer-term vision goes further still. \u201cThe aspiration is, if you\u2019re a company raising a seed round and a Series A round \u2014 so, just first capital \u2014 retail should be a big chunk of that round, much like it now is in the public markets,\u201d Tenev said at the conference<\/a>. \u201cAnd we should let those people in at the ground floor, so that they can actually benefit from this potential appreciation that\u2019s increasingly happening in the private markets.\u201d<\/p>\n If that vision takes hold, it could fundamentally change how startups raise their earliest capital, with retail investors eventually sitting alongside venture firms, including in the earliest rounds, where the biggest returns are often made, a whole lot of money is lost, as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n