Vlad Adds AI-Startup Room to Robinhood’s Casino… Complete With a Locked Door and a Leverage Tab

Every gambler's favorite casino is adding a new table.

In what feels like the final part before the big documentary drop… Robinhood (-10.8%) just announced something preposterous: letting everyday investors buy into private AI startups. (This is not satire, I repeat, this is NOT satire).

Robinhood Ventures (which sounds like a group chat full of messages that say “trust me, it’s early”) is creating a closed-end fund that’ll hold stakes in five or more “best-in-class” AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and other names that specialize in losing money.

And just to keep things exciting, the fund might use borrowed money to magnify gains. Because clearly, nothing bad ever happens when retail investors and leverage share a room.

(Source: Pyments)

Tenev says he’s “less concerned” about whether AI is a bubble and more focused on giving normal people exposure to the “drivers of disruption.” Translation: if this ship sinks, at least everyone’s going down together.

But not everyone’s convinced this is quite the genius idea Vlad thinks it is. Morningstar’s Bryan Armour warned that “managing a complex, private equity strategy like this could seriously burn their fast-moving user base.” Because yeah… this fund’s closed-end, meaning if things go south, you can’t just hit “sell.” You’ll be stuck holding your shares just praying that one day… you can maybe, just maybe, break even.

Still, Vlad’s feeling confident. Robinhood’s stock is up over 250% this year, revenues have doubled, and crypto trading exploded 300% last quarter… proof that its users are once again buying anything he throws in front of them.

As crazy as it sounds, this move shouldn’t come as a surprise given Tenev’s bigger vision… turning Robinhood into the one-stop shop for all things degenerate finance. From sports prediction markets (thanks to its Kalshi partnership) to AI private-equity funds, the company’s evolving from “meme-stock casino” to “Wall Street’s Dave and Busters.” No matter how I feel about it… pretty soon you’ll be able to parlay Monday Night Football, short Tesla, and buy pre-IPO OpenAI… all in the same app.

What could possibly go wrong?

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Robinhood as mentioned in the article.