Robinhood (HOOD) Chairman and CEO Vlad Tenev sits down with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to discuss the company's underwriting debut with Oura and whether a bigger name in the AI industry could be next on their IPO list.
ever since the Aura news came out and and even before, we've just been getting a lot of calls for for how we can be helpful. And I think the niche we could fill at first is being sort of like the representative of of retail. Um, you know, a lot of a lot of uh underwriters, um, including, you know, the conference we're at here, uh have great institutional relationships. And they can help, you know, getting family offices and and private wealth and all of all of those folks on board.
But I think where we're unique and and offer a value prop that is difficult to replicate is the retail distribution and and the fact that, you know, through our IPO offerings through say technologies, um, we we can help plug customers uh issuers into this large and vibrant retail community.
Should we just expect to see Robert Hood as an underwriter in some of these major AI IPOs going forward? Like I I think a lot of people were surprised to see you on Aura.
Yeah. I wasn't cuz I just talked to your CFO a couple weeks before and I'm like, all right, something's going on here. They're doing a lot of good things. Should we just expect to see you on there like we expect to see a Goldman and a Morgan Stanley?
Yeah, I mean, obviously I can't make any promises. Um, I mean, you you should know that we're working hard on um, uh across the board, you know, making sure people are aware of our offerings and and the advantages that we bring. We also have Robin Hood Ventures, which is very, very interesting. And Robin Hood Ventures Fund 1, which was our first fund that we took public to give retail exposure to private companies, uh, Aura was actually one of the companies that uh, we were able to invest in while they were still private.
And so the entire Robin Hood ecosystem, when you have Robin Hood ventures, um, and then Robin Hood ventures 2, which actually invests in companies at seed and series A stage, the earliest possible stage of company formation. So you have Robin Hood Ventures, uh, basically engaging with companies and we're building the machinery for that while they're still private. You have underwriting and IPO access for the IPO transition, and then you also have our post IPO offerings like all the things we're doing in earnings and shareholder Q&A.
So, I think increasingly there's uh, you know, a overall suite of products that we can offer to issuers. And and, you know, pretty soon, uh we'll have Trump accounts with the employer infrastructure as well. So, um, yeah, I I think um, I I think it's a it's an increasingly attractive proposition and and we'd like to go out there and be retail representative in in uh all the deals where it makes sense.