You can buy OpenAI shares on Robinhood now
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Robinhood's venture fund closed a $75 million investment in OpenAI on April 17.
Why it matters: It's the clearest avenue yet for retail investors to get access to shares of the AI giant before it goes public.
Driving the news: Robinhood Ventures Fund I, ticker RVI, acts as something of a mutual fund retail investors can buy into, but it contains shares of private companies.
- Those companies include some of the biggest names expected to IPO at some point in the coming years if not sooner, including Databricks, Stripe, Ramp, Oura, and now OpenAI.
- Shares are up 12% pre-market on the news.
Zoom out: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told Axios last year that he thinks the company's ability to democratize investment in private companies could be its biggest move ever.
- That's saying something given the degree to which Robinhood broke the retail investing model in the first place by bringing fee-free trading to mobile devices.
- The fund has no minimum to invest, no accreditation requirement or performance fee, though it does carry a 3.13% expense ratio according to stats on the Robinhood app.
Reality check: At OpenAI's current post-money valuation of $852 billion, the $75 million would equate to less than 1% ownership. (Axios has reached out to confirm the purchase price.)
- Retail traders can also gain access to OpenAI shares through a couple of other funds, including Cathie Wood's ARK Invest.
Flashback: OpenAI and Robinhood had a kerfuffle last year, when Robinhood said it had tokenized shares of the AI business. But OpenAI said no equity transfer had been approved Axios' Lucinda Shen reported.
- Robinhood later said those shares were held in a special-purpose vehicle, and that they aren't technically equity.
- Now, Robinhood is an enterprise customer of OpenAI.
The bottom line: As OpenAI gets closer to potentially going public, retail investors are clamoring for access to shares.
- They're getting it on the very platforms they've called home for years.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that Robinhood Ventures' investment in OpenAI equals less than 1% ownership (not less than one share).
