Venture

Robinhood opened the order window on Monday for Robinhood Ventures Fund II, a closed-end fund that will give retail investors exposure to seed-stage startups from the Y Combinator ecosystem,at an expected $25 per share.

The fund extends Robinhood’s private-markets push from late-stage names like OpenAI into the riskiest end of venture capital — seed-stage companies, most of which fail — packaged as an exchange-listed product with no investment minimums or accreditation requirements. It is the second such vehicle Robinhood has brought to market this year, after Robinhood Ventures Fund I listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March.

The offering totals 8 million shares — 7.6 million sold by the fund and 400,000 by Robinhood Markets — for a raise of about $200 million at the expected price, with underwriters holding a 30-day option to buy 1.2 million more. Robinhood customers can request shares through the app until the order window closes on Aug. 12, and the fund expects to list on the NYSE under the ticker RVII on Aug. 13 with positions in 80 private companies at launch. Goldman Sachs is lead bookrunner, joined by Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, UBS and Wells Fargo.

“The next generation of promising startups is being built today,” said Sarah Pinto, head of Robinhood Ventures. “With Robinhood Ventures Fund II, retail investors no longer have to wait until a company’s IPO to be part of an early growth journey.”

The Y Combinator Bet

RVII will invest in companies that are current or former Y Combinator participants, or whose founders went through the accelerator’s programs. Y Combinator has funded more than 5,000 companies since 2005 with a combined value above $1.3 trillion, including more than 100 unicorns, according to the offering announcement. Robinhood’s disclosures note that Y Combinator does not sponsor or endorse the fund.

“As Robinhood Ventures scales, our mission is for it to become the norm that retail is represented in your seed or Series A cap table,” said Rich Aberman, the fund’s portfolio manager.

The structure is a business development company, a closed-end fund regulated under the Investment Company Act of 1940,managed by Robinhood Ventures DE, an SEC-registered adviser owned by Robinhood Markets. Investors pay a 2% annual management fee plus a 20% incentive fee on realized gains, with total annual expenses estimated at 4.18%. Robinhood’s own materials call the investment “speculative,” warn of a “substantial risk of loss,” and note shareholders have no redemption rights — shares can only be sold on the open market, where they may trade below the value of the fund’s holdings.

Fund I’s $658 Million Start

Robinhood Ventures Fund I priced its IPO at $25 per share on March 6for a fund size of $658.4 million, targeting later-stage private companies. In April itbought about $75 million of OpenAI common stock, and its portfolio includes Stripe, Databricks, Revolut, Ramp, ElevenLabs, Airwallex, Boom, Mercor and Oura.

The venture funds run alongside Robinhood’s crypto-based route to the same demand. The company gave away tokenized OpenAI and SpaceX exposure to European users last year, drawing an objection from OpenAI, which said it had not approved any transfer of its equity. Robinhood has since launched its own blockchain with tokenized stocks, while the venture funds route private-market exposure through a registered wrapper instead.