Robinhood Markets, Inc.

Who owns Robinhood?

Robinhood Markets, Inc. is publicly traded on the Nasdaq as HOOD. Public shareholders own the company, though founders Tenev and Bhatt retain disproportionate voting power through Class B shares.

Is Robinhood profitable?

Yes. It reported $1.9 billion net income on $4.47 billion revenue in FY2025, a 43 percent net margin. Q3 2026 produced a record $1.42 billion in revenue.

How does Robinhood make money?

Through payment for order flow and transaction fees on options, equities, and crypto; net interest on customer balances and margin loans; and subscriptions and services including Robinhood Gold.

When did Robinhood go public?

July 29, 2021, at $38 per share. The IPO was widely considered weak, with the stock falling on debut and continuing to decline through 2022 before its multi-year recovery.

Does Robinhood own Bitstamp?

Yes. It completed the acquisition of the global crypto exchange Bitstamp in 2025 for approximately $200 million, adding international regulated crypto infrastructure.

What is Robinhood Gold?

A paid subscription tier offering better margin rates, IRA contribution matching, higher cash sweep yield, and premium perks. It had 5.2 million members by Q3 2026.

Is Robinhood a bank?

Not a chartered bank. It offers banking services through partner banks and regulated subsidiaries. Its broker-dealer entities are the core of the business.

Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt founded Robinhood in 2013 after meeting as Stanford physics students and working together on high-frequency trading software. They launched the app in March 2015 with a mission to democratize investing, betting that removing commissions would attract users traditional brokers ignored. A viral waitlist approach put a million people in line before the product fully launched.

The company grew through product expansion: options in 2017, crypto in 2018, cash management in 2019, and fractional shares in 2019. By 2020 it had raised enough capital to be valued at $11.7 billion, and the pandemic trading boom poured millions of new accounts onto the platform.

January 2021 defined its early history. The GameStop short squeeze drove unprecedented volume, then forced a trading halt when clearinghouse collateral demands spiked beyond its capital. The episode produced congressional hearings, a $70 million FINRA fine in June 2021, and deep reputational damage even as account growth accelerated. The July 2021 IPO debuted weakly at $38 and sank through 2022 as trading volumes collapsed, prompting layoffs of nearly a third of staff.

The turnaround built on product breadth. Robinhood Gold grew into a major subscription business. Retirement accounts, a credit card, and banking services added recurring revenue. The 2025 acquisitions of crypto exchange Bitstamp for roughly $200 million and RIA platform TradePMR internationalized and institutionalized the business. Prediction markets emerged as its fastest-growing product ever, contributing $173 million in Q3 2026 revenue alone. By late 2026 the company reported quarterly revenue records and traded at a market value investors once considered unreachable.

Robinhood's regulatory file is extensive. The January 2021 GameStop trading restrictions produced congressional hearings, class actions, and permanent scrutiny of its clearing and risk management. FINRA's $70 million fine in June 2021 covered outages, misleading options communications, and approval failures tied to a customer suicide.

Massachusetts securities regulators fined it $7.5 million over gamification practices and pursued a fiduciary-duty case. The SEC charged its crypto arm in 2024, resolved through settlement, over unregistered securities operations. FINRA and state regulators have issued additional smaller penalties.

Operational reliability remains a scrutiny point. Multiple outages during high-volume periods have drawn customer lawsuits and regulator attention, though the frequency has decreased as the company invested in infrastructure.