Revolut Ventures Wants to Let Retail Investors Back Pre-IPO Startups

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Retail investors usually get into unicorns only after the pros have cashed out, but from 2027 Revolut wants to let them in before the opening bell: the neobank has just set up a subsidiary called Revolut Ventures, through which selected customers will be able to invest in private tech companies inside the app. Robinhood, SoFi and Kraken are already active in the space, with mixed results.

What Revolut Has Announced

Rolandas Juteika, who leads wealth and trading for the European Economic Area at Revolut, wrote on LinkedIn that Revolut Ventures has been officially established and will launch in 2027. The platform is being built in partnership with Carne Group, one of Europe’s largest independent fund administrators. Carne Group acts as the management company for fund providers and helps them set up funds. It says it oversees more than $1 trillion (about €0.9 trillion) globally, and according to Monterey Insight it is the largest third-party management company in Ireland. PwC ranks it first in Luxembourg as well. Eligible users will be able to “build private-company positions alongside their existing portfolios,” in the Revolut app next to stocks, ETFs, bonds and money market funds. Revolut speaks of “institutional venture capital opportunities” for eligible retail investors, which have so far been reserved for “large institutions and the ultra-wealthy.”

Juteika explains the move this way: “With Revolut Ventures, we want to remove one of the last barriers in wealth management: the exclusion of retail investors from private companies.” He adds: “Value creation starts long before an IPO. By running our own platform, we give everyday investors the chance to access tomorrow’s market leaders today, through the Revolut app.”

The data behind it comes from PitchBook and the US Federal Reserve: the median age of companies at IPO rose from 6.9 years (2014) to 11 years (2025), and the number of listed US investment opportunities fell to about 3,900. More of the value created by technological innovation now accrues while companies are still private, which mainly benefits large institutions.

The topic is not entirely new for Revolut. According to Euronews, the neobank already launched private-markets investment products in selected European Economic Area countries this summer. Revolut Ventures is the next step, with a platform of its own.

The details remain open: Revolut has not said which countries will get the product first, who counts as “eligible,” which companies will be on offer or what it will cost.

What Revolut Gets Out of It

This is our own assessment, as Revolut gives no figures. The neobank is expanding rapidly: it recently secured full banking licenses in the UK and France, wants to broaden its revenue sources and, according to Euronews, is weighing a dual listing in London and New York, with no date set. Against that backdrop, investment products are a lever: they keep money and attention inside the app, generate fee income and cover a topic that is especially scarce for retail investors. Anyone who wants to invest in Anthropic, OpenAI or SpaceX today as a private individual has almost no way to get shares. A product that fills this gap is a strong argument for choosing a Revolut account over the house bank.

The twist: Revolut itself is among the companies in which Robinhood invests through its fund. The neobank is already in a competitor’s portfolio before it opens its own pre-IPO platform.

Robinhood Shows How It Can Go

Robinhood is furthest along. Its Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI) is a closed-end fund traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with, according to Robinhood, no minimum investment and no eligibility hurdle for investors. It holds stakes in Databricks, Stripe, Ramp, Mercor, Oura, Airwallex and, yes, Revolut. The management fee is 2 percent a year, halved to 1 percent for the first six months.

At its launch in the spring, the fund reportedly raised more than $658 million (about €590 million), mostly from retail investors, and opened at $22 (about €20), below its $25 offering price. According to Brokerchooser, the share price then shot above $57 (about €51) within a few weeks, almost double the net asset value, and fell back to about $25 by midsummer after some holdings went public. The second fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund II, which holds around 80 companies from the Y Combinator network, also debuted this summer about 10 percent below its offering price and, at 2 percent plus a 20 percent performance fee, costs about 4.2 percent a year according to one report.

In Europe, Robinhood took a different route with tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX. OpenAI responded with a post: these tokens are not OpenAI equity, the company had not been involved, and any transfer of shares requires its approval.

Who Else Is in the Race

According to The Block, SoFi offers access to private funds from Cashmere, Fundrise and Liberty Street Advisors, with minimums starting at $10. The funds track stakes in OpenAI, SpaceX and Epic Games. Crypto exchange Kraken plans to offer access to IPO allocations at the offering price through its xStocks alliance, represented as tokens. And in Vienna, the first European pre-IPO product on Anthropic has recently started trading: the 21shares Anthropic Synthetic ETP on the Vienna MTF.

What Speaks Against the Pre-IPO Hype

The Robinhood numbers show the risks of such offerings: the first fund at times traded at almost twice its net asset value before dropping back to its offering price, the second started in the red, and fees run from 2 to just over 4 percent a year depending on the fund. Robinhood itself warns of limited information, uncertain valuations, illiquid holdings and shares that can trade at a discount or premium to net asset value. On top of that, tokens do not always represent real shares, as the OpenAI case shows. Euronews also notes, in its coverage of the Revolut announcement, that private holdings are harder to sell and that investors can lose a large part or even all of their capital.

Revolut counters with the late IPO: if companies now go public after 11 years on average and much of the value is created beforehand, retail investors without such products are left on the sidelines. How Revolut Ventures will be structured, whether as a fund like Robinhood’s or with direct access, the company has yet to reveal.