VCs can’t seem to stop pumping more money into the stock-trading startup during the pandemic
$1.25 billion: That’s how much stock-trading startup Robinhood has raised from financial backers this year, per Fox Business News.
It’s been a transformative year for Robinhood, the easy-to-use stock-trading app that we profiled in June. Back then, despite an embarrassing string of outages on important trading days, the company was emerging as a surprising pandemic-era star. It had just raised a fresh round of capital, and was drawing the attention of bored and locked-down young professionals looking for a distraction in the absence of sports.
Since then, Robinhood’s profile has continued to rise — and notwithstanding its association with brutal losses by market-newbie users, its valuation has risen too. The company recently raised $660 million from new and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and others, in an extended Series G round.
Add that to its fundraising from earlier this year and Robinhood has taken in $1.25 billion from investors in 2020; its valuation has risen from $8.3 billion in June to about $11.7 billion. Some observers have argued that an influx of amateur investors is creating a “Robinhood effect” that’s influencing the market as a whole. That’s a highly debatable proposition, but the perception has never been stronger: Robinhood’s backers are betting that it has become a cultural fixture.
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