Robinhood

Robinhood Markets, Inc. is a financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California, best known for its commission-free trading platform. Founded in 2013 by Stanford classmates Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, the company disrupted the brokerage industry by eliminating trading fees for stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies. Its mobile-first app targets younger investors, with the average customer age at 35 as of March 2025. Robinhood generates revenue through payment for order flow, margin lending, and premium subscription services like Robinhood Gold. The platform handles over 200 million option contracts and 3 billion event contracts monthly, operating in the U.S., UK, and EU (for crypto and tokenized assets). While it offers banking services, credit cards, and a news site called Sherwood.News, Robinhood restricts trading in mutual funds, bonds, and certain penny stocks. The company has faced regulatory scrutiny over its gamification of trading and role in the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, but remains a major player in retail investing.

Robinhood went public on the Nasdaq in 2021 under the ticker HOOD and became a component of the S&P 500. For fiscal year 2024, the company reported revenue of $2.95 billion, and in 2025 it crossed a $100 billion market capitalization briefly. The platform processes over 3 billion event contracts monthly and has seen record net deposits of $16 billion in Q4 2024. Robinhood is aggressively expanding globally, with a launch in the UK in 2024 and plans to acquire the crypto exchange Bitstamp to boost its international crypto presence. [edit]