# AI backlash grows when ordinary people lack ownership

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-backlash-grows-when-ordinary-people-lack-ownership/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Vlad Tenev](https://realalpha.app/people/vlad-tenev/) · Vlad Tenev is co-founder and CEO of Robinhood. · Co-founded Robinhood in 2013, then steered it from a $500M loss in 2023 to a $1.1B profit.
- Host: [Alex Heath](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-heath/) · Founder & host, Sources · Left The Verge to start Sources in 2025; it has made over $1M since, mostly from sponsors.
- Show: Sources
- Episode: [Robinhood’s CEO on letting AI trade your money](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/), Oct 13, 2026
- Moment: 27:09 to 32:28 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-backlash-grows-when-ordinary-people-lack-ownership/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1629

## Quote

> “If AI had, if there were **more individual owners** of these AI companies at the earliest stages, they would be defending it”
> — [Vlad Tenev](https://realalpha.app/people/vlad-tenev/) at [31:34](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1894) · Sources

## Takeaways

1. People may resent AI if its gains flow mainly to VCs and companies.
2. Retail investors can buy into private companies through Robinhood Ventures.
3. A diversified basket can spread the risk of early-stage investing.

## About this segment

Vlad Tenev links AI resentment to the fact that ordinary people have little stake in the companies building it. He argues that opening private-market investing can give people a reason to support AI’s growth.

From “Robinhood’s CEO on letting AI trade your money”, Oct 13, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[27:13](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1633) Yeah. I'm really interested to hear your view on the conversation around AI, bigger picture, and how people feel about it. Because I was thinking about, it's so visceral how people feel about it. They either love it and they're using it and it's improving their businesses and their lives, or they hate it. They detest it. They refuse to use it. Very polarizing. and the data centers are a problem. There's a lot of problems.

[27:33](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1653) And I was thinking about, you know, this concept of inequality and how it connects to like the Robinhood mission and, you know, bringing inequality to finance and democratizing finance. And I wonder if you agree or not that I'm starting to think a lot of the negativity around AI may actually have to do with inequality. Completely agree. Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why we push so hard for individual investors .

[27:59](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1679) . being able to invest in private companies. And we have Robinhood Ventures, which is our US-based, think of it as publicly traded venture funds that are listed on the NYSE. Yeah, we have two funds that have IPO'd, more are coming as well. You just had Crusoe on there, I saw. Yeah, Crusoe was Robinhood Ventures' one investment. Robinhood Ventures' fund two is seed and series A stage. Wow. So fund one is frontier companies that are leading their industries.

[28:29](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1709) typically late stage. So OpenAI is in there. Databricks. Databricks, exactly. Revolut. So really just top quality, late stage names that are hard to get into. Available to mass market audience through a product that is traded on the nicey, like any stock. And the great thing about it is because we have so many retail customers, we provided retail distribution directly. So we went public, we raised capital, the bulk of which came from Robinhood individual investors, and then that capital was invested into these companies. It's an efficient structure, right?

[29:07](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1747) There's very, very little middle layers and no carry for Robinhood Ventures Fund 1. Robinhood Ventures Fund 2, we wanted to take it further and do something that nobody's done before, which is seed and Series A stage companies. Companies nobody's heard of before they become household names. Which is exciting, but I can say now as a new investor, also very risky. Yeah. I mean, the risk is highest in those, but also the potential upside and the opportunity is greatest. And actually there've been studies, there's a pitch book study that looked at, you're an investor, so you've probably seen this one, seed investing as an asset class had the highest aggregate returns, even accounting for a higher rate of company failures than any other class. The parallel is a beautiful thing. Yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, we solved the

[29:55](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1795) problem of individual company failures by diversifying in a broad-based basket. And when Robinhood Ventures Fund 2 went public, we seeded the portfolio with 80 companies. So it's going to be a large number of investments. We're building the machinery to do this. And of course, overseas, We have tokenization, which we've demonstrated with our tokenizing OpenAI and SpaceX for our European customers as a gift.

[30:24](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1824) And then, you know, now that the chain is out, we're obviously very keen on taking our tokenized stock products, stock tokens, and expanding that to other assets. So, yeah, when you look at AI, a big problem, and you juxtapose it with something like crypto, which was available to individual investors from the beginning. From the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, it was like an individual decentralized phenomenon.

[30:51](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1851) Normal people adopted it before institutions. Became incredibly wealthy from it. Yeah. Yeah, and now, you know, you've got CryptoArmy. If there's a hint of government overreach, the CryptoArmy is like swinging elections, right? The 2024 election hung on the balance of huge individual support for crypto. Juxtapose that with AI. No one has exposure to these. Nobody has exposure. Why do I want the data center in my backyard if it's just going to make these venture capitalists richer?

[31:22](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1882) Right. It's just expensive, resource-consuming, slightly better Google. And if you think of it that way, of course you're going to hate it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big problem with people not having skin in the game, not rooting. If AI had, if there were more individual owners of these AI companies at the earliest stages, they would be defending it because it's my AI company. I want it to do better.

[31:50](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1910) I want it to expand and to grow because I benefit and I have skin in the game. So yeah, that's why we care so much about Robinhood. ventures and our efforts to get AI companies to, even before they go public, give individual investors some skin in the game. And, you know, it's exacerbated by the fact that private markets are getting flush with capital and companies feel less of a need to go public until they're now in trillion dollar plus valuations. AI is only as useful as the context it has. But when