Robinhood Raises $323M from DST, Sequoia, and Ribbit Capital Tops $7.6B Valuation

Robinhood, the stock trading app, has achieved a Series E valuation of $7.6 billion after a successful $323 million funding round led by DST Global, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia, NEA, and Thrive Capital.

Robinhood, the free stock trading app, on July 22 announced a staggering $323 million funding round led by DST Global. The latest Series E financing has valued the Menlo Park-headquartered firm at around $7.6 billion. The funding process moved the valuation of Robinhood up from its  Series D valuation of over $5 billion.

According to the company, Thrive Capital, NEA, Ribbit Capital, and Sequoia also participated in this round. Robinhood plans to use these funds to expand the business, offer new financial services and to:

“Keep pursuing [its] mission of democratizing finance for all.”

The Stock Trading App Company was founded in 2013. In the past year, the platform has added several features to justify the valuation increase. Notably, it has upgraded its clearing system dubbed Clearing by Robinhood. Additionally, the company also acquired a media startup to set up Robinhood Snacks. The start-up provides short tidbits of the trending and useful financial news.

Up to today, Robinhood has raised over $860 million in venture capital funding. The company is one of the many young companies that strive to compete with traditional financial institutions. It offers cheaper and user-friendly digital services.

In most cases, financial technology start-ups normally have lower costs since they have no legacy infrastructure to maintain. Also, they have automated most of their processes and services which significantly lowers their operation costs. Robinhood has gained much popularity among young consumers due to its commission-free stock trading app.

The company confirmed earlier that it is looking to expand the types of financial services it provides. It is also aiming to add cash management services to its platform.

Developments

From January 2018, the company has been offering crypto assets. Since then, it has rolled out several crypto-related trading features and coins. Robinhood launched crypto trading for seven assets in May including ethereum and bitcoin in New York. Notably, the company added Ethereum Classic to its trading platform a day before Coinbase in August 2018.

It supports crypto trading in Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin, and Ethereum Classic in 20 states. The company started the IPO process in motion in September 2018. At that time, CEO Baiju Bhatt said:

“Being a public company I think aligns very closely with our mission as well. And it’s definitely on the horizon, not in the immediate term, but that’s something we are thinking about.”

The company announced in December that it aims to launch a “checking and savings” service. In that service, the customer deposits would be insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corp for an amount of up to $250,000.