Robinhood raises $660M, pushes valuation to $12B

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One of the most popular trading platforms for millennials, Robinhood, has raised $660 million in its latest funding round. Robinhood is now valued at $11.7 billion and has been reported to be planning an IPO this year.

Robinhood has recorded a surge in retail trading as its users turned to trading stocks and digital currencies on its platform in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. With movement being limited and many sources of livelihood lost, many have turned to trading to make some extra bucks.

This surge in user numbers has helped the company secure $660 million in an extended Series G funding round, a spokeswoman for the firm told Reuters. The fundraising is an extension of the Series G funding round that the company announced in August in which it raised $200 million from new investor D1 Capital Partners.

The new cash infusion comes from new and existing investors in the company. They include Sequoia, Andreesen Horowitz, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital and DST Global.

“We’ve raised an additional $460 million in subsequent closings to our Series G to support our core product and customer experience and new offerings like cash management and recurring investments,” the spokeswoman said.

Robinhood has raised $1.25 billion from investors in 2020 alone, Reuters reported. In May, the Menlo Park, California-based firm raised $280 million in a Series F fundraising round led by Sequoia Capital. The capital was to be invested in rolling out more products and expanding globally, co-CEO Vlad Tenev stated at the time.

Robinhood has now raised $2.2 billion from investors in total, company insights platform Crunchbase revealed. Its $11.7 billion valuation is now $4 billion up from just over a year ago when it was valued at $7.6 billion following a $323 million fundraising round.

Established in 2013, Robinhood has taken the stock trading industry by storm with its zero-commission model. Its easy-to-use platform has also made it popular with novice retail traders. Robinhood also allows its users to trade Bitcoin SV and six other digital currencies, further increasing its popularity as a one-stop shop for all trading needs.

It hasn’t been all smooth-sailing for the company, however. As CoinGeek reported, the company is under investigations by the SEC over alleged failures to disclose how it generates its profits. Being a zero-commission platform, Robinhood makes money by selling customer orders to market makers. In December last year, the company paid $1.25 million to FINRA over failures relating to the routing of customer orders through broker-dealers.