Robinhood Markets, Inc. is an American financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It operates an electronic trading platform that facilitates commission-free trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies as well as individual retirement accounts via a mobile app introduced in March 2015. Robinhood is a FINRA-regulated broker-dealer, registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. The company's revenue comes from three main sources: interest earned on customers' cash balances, selling order information to high-frequency traders and margin lending. As of December 2023, Robinhood had 23.4 million funded accounts and 10.9 million monthly active users. In April 2022, Robinhood rolled out a cryptocurrency wallet to more than 2 million users.
Co-founder of Robinhood Vladimir Tenev speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on May 10, 2016, in New York City.
Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt (left) and moderator Josh Constine (right) speak onstage during Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 6, 2018, in San Francisco, California.
Payment for order flow (PFOF) is the compensation that a stockbroker receives from a market maker in exchange for the broker routing its clients' trades to that market maker. It is a controversial practice that has been called a "kickback" by its critics. Policymakers supportive of PFOF and several people in finance who have a favorable view of the practice have defended it for helping develop new investment apps, low-cost trading, and more efficient execution.
Co-founder of Robinhood Markets Vladimir Tenev. His company became known for helping pioneer commission-free trading by relying on PFOF.