Robinhood’s venture fund IPO attracted 150,000+ retail investors, CEO says
Robinhood’s venture fund IPO attracted 150,000+ retail investors, CEO says
Robinhood 风险投资基金 IPO 吸引超 15 万名散户投资者，CEO 如是说
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is touting the success of the fintech’s new Ventures Fund I, which allows retail investors to invest in private tech companies like Stripe, Oura, Databricks, OpenAI, and others, through a publicly traded fund listed on the NYSE. “We had something like over 150,000 retail investors participate in the IPO, so it’s quite democratized,” noted Tenev in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference this week.
Robinhood 首席执行官 Vlad Tenev 近日大力宣传了该公司新推出的“风险投资基金一号”（Ventures Fund I）所取得的成功。该基金允许散户投资者通过在纽交所上市的公开交易基金，投资 Stripe、Oura、Databricks、OpenAI 等私营科技公司。Tenev 在本周《华尔街日报》举办的“万物未来”（Future of Everything）会议上接受采访时表示：“我们有超过 15 万名散户投资者参与了此次 IPO，这确实实现了投资的民主化。”
The fund, which launched in March, arrives at a time when the term “unicorn,” which once referred to the rare billion-dollar startup, has become outdated. When AI model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic are raising capital at valuations of $850+ billion to $900 billion, another word besides “unicorn” is needed. “We call them frontier companies,” said Tenev, explaining how Robinhood differentiates these larger, private companies from other startups. “There are private companies that are raising capital at valuations in the high hundreds of billions. You’re going to see, perhaps, multiple private companies getting into the trillions [in valuation] before the IPO — before retail investors can participate,” he said.
该基金于今年 3 月推出，正值“独角兽”一词——曾指代稀有的十亿美元级初创公司——变得过时之际。当 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 等人工智能模型提供商以 8500 亿至 9000 亿美元的估值筹集资金时，我们需要一个比“独角兽”更贴切的词汇。Tenev 解释了 Robinhood 如何将这些大型私营公司与其他初创公司区分开来：“我们称它们为‘前沿公司’（frontier companies）。有些私营公司正以数千亿美元的高估值筹集资金。你可能会看到，在 IPO 之前——即散户投资者能够参与之前——会有多家私营公司的估值达到万亿美元级别。”
Robinhood’s initial fund has exposure to many tech companies that have yet to go public, including most recently OpenAI, which joins Mercor, Ramp, Airwallex, Boom, and others. Tenev believes the new fund makes sense as part of Robinhood’s broader mission to democratize access to markets for retail investors. Initially, the company did this through its zero-commission trades, which significantly increased retail participation in the public markets. Now it sees investing in large, private companies as the next step.
Robinhood 的首只基金涵盖了许多尚未上市的科技公司，最近加入的包括 OpenAI，此前已纳入的公司还有 Mercor、Ramp、Airwallex 和 Boom 等。Tenev 认为，这只新基金是 Robinhood 实现“让散户投资者更民主地进入市场”这一更宏大使命的重要组成部分。起初，该公司通过零佣金交易实现了这一目标，极大地提高了散户在公开市场上的参与度。现在，他们将投资大型私营公司视为下一步战略。
“You can think of [the new fund] as a publicly traded venture capital firm with daily liquidity. No accreditation requirements and no carry,” Tenev said in the interview. “So just a competitive management fee, no carry — which, for those of you familiar with venture capital, typically, when you invest in a fund as an LP, you pay a management fee, but there’s also a carry of typically around 20%, which means 20% of your profits go to the fund manager.”
“你可以把（这只新基金）看作是一家具有每日流动性的公开交易风险投资公司。没有合格投资者要求，也没有附带权益（carry），” Tenev 在采访中说道。“只有具有竞争力的管理费，没有附带权益。对于熟悉风险投资的人来说，通常作为有限合伙人（LP）投资一只基金时，除了支付管理费，还要支付约 20% 的附带权益，这意味着你 20% 的利润要交给基金经理。”
Tenev believes that, due to the size of these companies, retail investors should be able to get in earlier than the IPO — especially given how many companies are choosing to wait to go public. “The aspiration is, if you’re a company raising a seed round and a Series A round — so, just first capital — retail should be a big chunk of that round, much like it now is in the public markets,” Tenev said. “And we should let those people in at the ground floor, so that they can actually benefit from this potential appreciation that’s increasingly happening in the private markets,” he added.
Tenev 认为，鉴于这些公司的规模，散户投资者应该能够比 IPO 更早地进入——尤其是考虑到许多公司选择推迟上市。“我们的愿景是，如果一家公司正在进行种子轮或 A 轮融资——即最初的资本募集——散户投资者应该成为该轮融资的重要组成部分，就像现在在公开市场那样，” Tenev 说。“我们应该让这些人从最底层进入，这样他们才能真正从私营市场日益增长的潜在增值中获益。”