Advertisement

Robinhood Raises Cool $660M in Extended Funding Round

Unicorn trading app Robinhood has taken over $600 million in an extended funding round as it rides the summer’s retail trading wave.

  • Reuters reported Wednesday that Robinhood had raised a total of $660 million in its latest Series G round.

  • The trading app, which lists some cryptocurrencies, took commits from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital, and D1 Capital Partners.

  • The round had originally raised $460 million, but was extended when D1 Capital offered to invest a further $200 million.

  • That last-minute commit has taken Robinhood’s valuation upwards of $11.7 billion, a spokesperson told Reuters.

  • The funding will be used to support core products and roll out a cash management and recurring investment feature.

  • Robinhood said it will also improve its customer experience after a year with a number of outages – the latest being earlier this month – that have rendered the app temporarily unusable.

  • Retail-orientated platforms like Robinhood have enjoyed a surge of usage during the pandemic as people working from home have piled into stocks betting on a quick market recovery.

  • Some have accused Robinhood of failing to protect its customers by offering complex products to amateurs.

  • A 20-year-old student committed suicide in June after thinking he had got himself into more than $700,000 worth of debt from trading sophisticated options.

  • It later transpired the negative balance was a temporary blip before the contract executed.

  • Still, Wednesday’s raise shows finance apps are thriving as the next generation of unicorns.

  • Earlier this year, digital bank Revolut raised $500 million in a Series D, taking its total valuation up to $5.5 billion.

See also: Robinhood May Face $10M SEC Fine Over Disclosure Failures

Related Stories