On Friday, Robinhood cofounder and CEO Vlad Tenev rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. This time, he wasn’t celebrating the public offering of his own startup, but instead an investment fund that Robinhood launched that allows retail traders to get access to red-hot private companies like Databricks and Ramp.
Robinhood’s core philosophy has always been giving everyday users access to the same tools, such as options trading, as their institutional counterparts. Tenev argues that walling off such products to accredited investors contributes to the wealth gap. Robinhood’s mileage on this ethos has varied, with the platform only rebounding from the reputational hit of the 2021 GameStop debacle in recent years. But Tenev continues to double down on expanding the investment suite on his brokerage platform. That includes a recent foray into prediction markets—the new oracle of truth and hedging, or a new way to lose money on parlay bets, depending on who you’re asking.
