HOOD
RVI
Robinhood’s new side quest
Robinhood has rolled out a closed-end fund packed with stakes in big private companies that are expected to go public someday — yes, including OpenAI. In other words, it’s trying to sell the financial equivalent of backstage passes.
Why this matters for investors
If you’re a retail investor, private-company access is usually locked behind velvet ropes, minimums, and a lot of “sorry, not for you.” Robinhood is leaning into the idea that everyday investors want a piece of the pre-IPO action, and it’s building products around that appetite.
That matters for HOOD because this is exactly the kind of product expansion that can deepen engagement and make the platform feel less like a place to buy meme stocks and more like a broader investing destination. If the fund catches on, it could also help Robinhood carve out a niche nobody else is serving quite the same way.
The bigger picture
Of course, there’s a little buzzkill baked into the whole thing: a fund like this doesn’t mean you’re buying OpenAI shares directly. But it does show Robinhood is still hunting for new ways to keep users inside its ecosystem.
Big picture: if Robinhood can keep turning “I wish I could invest in that” into a product, the business starts looking a lot less like a one-trick app and a lot more like a financial shopping mall.