Robinhood Lets Regular People Invest in Private Companies Like OpenAI

Robinhood announced on April 22, 2026 that it had put $75 million into OpenAI through a new fund designed for everyday investors. The fund, called Robinhood Ventures Fund I (trading on the stock exchange as RVI), allows anyone with a Robinhood account to own a small piece of private companies — something that was previously available only to wealthy people or big investment firms.

More than 150,000 regular investors bought into the fund when it launched in March, according to CEO Vlad Tenev.

What Makes This Different

Normally, to invest in private companies — firms not yet listed on the stock exchange — you need to be wealthy. Investment rules define "accredited investors" as people with over $1 million in net worth. These investors also typically have to put in six figures at a time and stick with the investment for years.

Robinhood's new fund works differently. It bundles money from many regular investors and buys stakes in private companies. Because the fund itself is sold as a stock (RVI), anyone can buy a share of it, just like buying shares of Apple or Microsoft. You can even sell your share any day the stock market is open if you want out.

Robinhood also announced investments in two other private companies earlier in March: Stripe, a payment processor, and ElevenLabs, a company that uses AI to create realistic voices. The company plans to invest in other high-growth private companies as well.

Why Robinhood Is Doing This

Robinhood says this move addresses a real problem. Over the past 20 years, many of the fastest-growing companies have stayed private much longer than they used to. That means regular people miss out on the biggest gains, which go only to institutional investors and wealthy individuals.

Tenev has pointed out that there are far fewer publicly traded companies today than in past decades. This creates what he calls a "democratization imperative" — the idea that regular people should have access to the same kinds of investments as the wealthy do.

OpenAI fits Robinhood's goal. ChatGPT has already made AI mainstream, and OpenAI is building out the infrastructure to power the next generation of AI tools. It made sense for the fund to invest there.

The Risks

This new model introduces real questions worth considering. Robinhood is trying to do something that the investment industry has never done at scale before: give regular people access to private company investments while letting them trade their shares daily on the open market.

Private companies are riskier than publicly traded ones. You have less public information about how they are doing, and their value can swing sharply. Traditional venture capital investors — the professionals who do this for a living — typically expect to hold their investments for five to ten years and accept that many will fail. They also spread bets across dozens of companies.

If regular investors can trade RVI shares every day, there is a chance for panic selling during market downturns, which could cause problems for the fund. And Robinhood will need to be very good at picking winning private companies. That takes relationships and expertise that typically take decades to build.

The broader context here is worth noting. We saw something similar in the 1990s when online brokerages first let regular people trade stocks without a broker. That opened up the market in a real way. But private companies are a different animal — much harder to value, harder to exit from, and much riskier.

What Comes Next

Robinhood is also starting a financial education program aimed at teaching one million people about investing by 2030. This suggests the company understands that regular investors need help understanding private company investments. They carry different risks and work differently than buying stock in an established public company.

The OpenAI investment shows that Robinhood is serious about making RVI work. Whether this actually opens up private company investing for regular people — or just lets them take on venture capital-style risks with less expertise — will depend on how well Robinhood picks investments and how regular investors behave when the market gets rough.

For most people, this is an interesting option to have, but it should be approached carefully. It solves a real problem in how investment opportunities are distributed, but it also introduces new kinds of risk.