《Naval Handbook》— Naval launches the AI fund USVC, allowing retail investors to invest in OpenAI and Anthropic before listing

USVC, a new fund under Silicon Valley’s well-known investor Naval’s AngelList, was recently launched. It’s designed to let everyday investors indirectly participate in hot, still-private tech companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Vercel, Crusoe, Sierra, and Legora with a minimum threshold of just $500.

Officially, it’s packaged as “investing in companies that will shape the future before everything becomes obvious,” and it emphasizes that this is a fund open to all investors that doesn’t require accredited-investor status. The goal is to transform venture-capital assets that used to belong only to the wealthy and insiders into a product that retail investors can also access.

Invest $500 to invest early AI companies

USVC’s core narrative is straightforward: as more and more star startups choose to stay in the private market for longer, the truly explosive valuation growth often already happens before the IPO. Public investors who wait until the stocks list to get in often end up only receiving residual returns—after the companies are “mature” and growth has slowed.

From a legal-structure standpoint, USVC is not a traditional ETF in the usual sense—one that’s publicly listed and can be traded anytime. It’s also not something ordinary people directly buy as private-company stock. According to the offering memorandum, USVC is a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Its objective is to pursue long-term capital appreciation. It primarily invests in U.S. venture-capital funds and private high-growth companies, and at least 80% of net assets plus borrowed funds must be allocated to investments related to U.S. venture-capital funds and private high-growth enterprises.

USVC holds xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI

USVC’s currently disclosed position in xAI is its largest holding, with a weight of about 20.23%, and it’s marked as “Acquisition Pending.” Next in order are Crusoe 4.97%, Anthropic 2.65%, Sierra Technologies 2.65%, Legora 1.77%, OpenAI 1.64%, and Vercel 0.88%. The company also emphasizes that this portfolio is still being built and will add more positions in the future.

AngelList’s biggest selling point is “breaking the venture-capital entry barrier.” The website presents it beautifully: open to all investors, minimum investment of $500, no need for connections, and no performance fee. The investment portfolio is managed and reviewed by Teachable founder and Carry founder Ankur Nagpal, while Naval Ravikant participates as chairman of the investment committee in strategy and portfolio construction.

The official site also stresses that the AngelList platform itself has more than 4,500 active deal managers, more than 25,000 funds, more than 13,000 active startups, and about $125 billion in platform assets. It’s trying to position itself as a venture-capital distribution machine that combines traffic, deal flow, and judgment.

Community questions the fees for being insincere

The first to raise skepticism was X user gemchanger. He directly flipped through USVC’s offering memorandum and pointed out that although the fund’s homepage markets “1% management fee, 0% carry, invest from $500,” the details in the documents show the actual total expense ratio isn’t low. Moreover, the underlying funds may still charge management fees and carried interest. The so-called “0% carry” is more like USVC’s layer not charging additional performance-based profit sharing, rather than the overall structure truly having no carry.

Gemchanger also questioned USVC’s initial holdings—such as xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Vercel—which are already among the most well-known AI names in the market. This contrasts with the official messaging of “investing in the future before everything becomes obvious.” As for fund liquidity, he also noted that USVC is not publicly traded; investors mainly rely on the board’s discretionary quarterly repurchase mechanism, and the usual cap is only 5% of the fund’s net assets. When the market deteriorates, exits may not be smooth.

Users question how USVC exits liquidity

Another X user, Matan Pier, focused on the exit mechanism itself. He kept asking: if the companies in the portfolio go public via IPO, do USVC investors receive the corresponding shares, or does the fund sell at the fund level and then distribute cash? If there’s a merger but it’s not a 100% acquisition, how does the fund handle the remaining stakes? If the company stays private for ten years, is USVC planning to sell through the secondary market, wait for an IPO, or passively hold?

In addition, whether the fund has any anti-dilution protection became another point of attention from the community. These questions are being amplified precisely because USVC is, in essence, a closed-end structure focused mainly on private, non-public assets. The official documents also explicitly state that its shares should be viewed as lacking liquidity, so investors shouldn’t expect to sell at any time.

Going a step further, the discussion began to point directly at Naval Ravikant himself. As AngelList co-founder and chairman of USVC’s investment committee, Naval is one of the most important “face” figures for this fund. Meanwhile, CoinList was originally a project driven by AngelList and Protocol Labs, and only later was split off from AngelList and operated independently.

Because of this, some investors have started making sharper speculations on the community: after CoinList in recent years no longer has the strong wealth-effect and market halo it once had, is Naval trying to rebuild a new “retail investors getting in on private tech assets” brand through USVC?

Others also suspect that if he or the AngelList ecosystem itself already holds stakes in these popular AI companies through various funds, SPVs, or platform networks, then after valuations rise, USVC may also use that to partially cash out before they go public.

This article 《Naval’s Playbook》Naval launches AI fund USVC, retail investors can invest in OpenAI and Anthropic even before they list—first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.