Robinhood Markets Inc. is raising a new funding round at a valuation of about $5.6B, according to insiders familiar with the matter.
The round puts the stock trading app at a 4x increase from their $1.3B valuation a year ago, and ranks them among the top 15 highest-valued private tech companies in the US.
Popular among the youths
In 2012, the Occupy Wall Street movement inspired Robinhood’s founders to bring financial services to everyone regardless of financial status.
Today, Robinhood caters to a younger, less financially stable generation (the median age of their 4m users is 30) by offering free stock trades that blow discount brokers out of the water.
And investors are biting
Robinhood has managed to keep costs low by giving the middle finger to marketing and reducing overhead, and their recent foray into commission-free crypto trading has prospective investors especially eager.
But, Robinhood is still only a third the size of old guard trading firm E*Trade Financial (which has a $15B market cap), so they still have a ways to go before they’re king of the Street.
