Startups

Robinhood files to go public after squeaking to profitability in 2020

Comment

illustration of robinhood feather logo spraypainted on a brick wall
Image Credits: TechCrunch

This afternoon Robinhood, the popular investing app for consumers filed to go public. The company intends to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol “HOOD.”

That Robinhood released an S-1 filing today is not a surprise. The company privately filed to go public back in March, leaving the startup-watching world waiting for the eventual filing drop. Robinhood’s public offering document includes a placeholder $100 million raise figure, though that will change the closer we get to its debut.

How Robinhood’s explosive growth rate came to be

The company is pursuing a public listing after a period of rapid growth. Robinhood saw its revenues soar from $277.5 million in 2019 to $985.8 million in 2020.

The company’s first-quarter numbers are even more impressive. During the first three months of 2021, Robinhood generated revenues of $522.2 million, up around four times from its Q1 2020 result of $127.6 million. TechCrunch expected Robinhood to post a strong first quarter based on previous filings relating to its payment-for-order-flow (PFOF) business.

Notably, Robinhood was profitable in 2020, generating net income of around $7.4 million during the one-year period. However, the company’s most recent period includes an epic $1.49 billion cost relating to “change[s] in fair value of convertible notes and warrant liability,” leading the company to post an astronomical net loss of $1.44 billion in the first quarter of the year. That compares with a net loss of $107 million for 2019.

For the three-month period ended March 31, Robinhood posted $463.8 million in operating expenses, inclusive of “brokerage and transaction” costs. The company’s business then, apart from its fair-value changes, had a good start to the year in profitability terms.

Robinhood’s epic Q1 growth explains its fundraising boom

That Robinhood closed the first quarter of 2021 on a more than $2 billion annual run rate is notable; the firm has quickly scaled to mammoth size on the back of rising consumer interest in investing in both stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Robinhood has proved to be a lightning rod for oversight, fines, mass usage and culture in the last year. And it raised billions this year after running into operational issues regarding trading of certain stocks that retail investors found particularly appealing.

Turning to investor results, DST Global, Index Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Ribbit capital are listed as shareholders with more than 5% of the company apiece, though certain information in the S-1 filing is yet to be included, including share counts for most of those groups. DST’s 58,102,765 Class A shares, however, are listed.

Robinhood has three classes of shares, including Class A shares with one vote, Class B shares with 10, and Class C shares with none.

TechCrunch is parsing the S-1 and will have more in a following piece. Update: Here!

 

More TechCrunch

AWS has confirmed its European “sovereign cloud” will go live by the end of 2025, enabling greater data residency for the region.

AWS confirms will launch European ‘sovereign cloud’ in Germany by 2025, plans €7.8B investment over 15 years

Go Digit, an Indian insurance startup, has raised $141 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, ADIA, and Morgan Stanley as part of its IPO.

Indian insurance startup Go Digit raises $141M from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Peakbridge intends to invest in between 16 and 20 companies, investing around $10 million in each company. It has made eight investments so far.

Food VC Peakbridge has new $187M fund to transform future of food, like lab-made cocoa

For over six decades, the nonprofit has been active in the financial services sector.

Accion’s new $152.5M fund will back financial institutions serving small businesses globally

Meta’s newest social network, Threads is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months. Instagram head Adam Mosseri noted that the company…

Threads finally starts its own fact-checking program

Looking Glass makes trippy-looking mixed-reality screens that make things look 3D without the need of special glasses. Today, it launches a pair of new displays, including a 16-inch mode that…

Looking Glass launches new 3D displays

Replacing Sutskever is Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s director of research.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and longtime chief scientist, departs

Intuitive Machines made history when it became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, so it makes sense to adapt that tech for Mars.

Intuitive Machines wants to help NASA return samples from Mars

As Google revamps itself for the AI era, offering AI overviews within its search results, the company is introducing a new way to filter for just text-based links. With the…

Google adds ‘Web’ search filter for showing old-school text links as AI rolls out

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will take a crew to suborbital space for the first time in nearly two years later this month, the company announced on Tuesday.  The NS-25…

Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard launches on May 19

This will enable developers to use the on-device model to power their own AI features.

Google is building its Gemini Nano AI model into Chrome on the desktop

It ran 110 minutes, but Google managed to reference AI a whopping 121 times during Google I/O 2024 (by its own count). CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the figure to wrap…

Google mentioned ‘AI’ 120+ times during its I/O keynote

Firebase Genkit is an open source framework that enables developers to quickly build AI into new and existing applications.

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps

In the coming months, Google says it will open up the Gemini Nano model to more developers.

Patreon and Grammarly are already experimenting with Gemini Nano, says Google

As part of the update, Reddit also launched a dedicated AMA tab within the web post composer.

Reddit introduces new tools for ‘Ask Me Anything,’ its Q&A feature

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

LearnLM is already powering features across Google products, including in YouTube, Google’s Gemini apps, Google Search and Google Classroom.

LearnLM is Google’s new family of AI models for education

The official launch comes almost a year after YouTube began experimenting with AI-generated quizzes on its mobile app. 

Google is bringing AI-generated quizzes to academic videos on YouTube

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: Watch all of the AI, Android reveals

Google Play has a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools.

Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps.

Gemini on Android becomes more capable and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Veo can capture different visual and cinematic styles, including shots of landscapes and timelapses, and make edits and adjustments to already-generated footage.

Google Veo, a serious swing at AI-generated video, debuts at Google I/O 2024

In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.

Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more

The summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of insights from Google Maps’ community of more than 300 million contributors.

Google is bringing Gemini capabilities to Google Maps Platform

Google says that over 100,000 developers already tried the service.

Project IDX, Google’s next-gen IDE, is now in open beta

The system effectively listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” in-real time. 

Google will use Gemini to detect scams during calls

The standard Gemma models were only available in 2 billion and 7 billion parameter versions, making this quite a step up.

Google announces Gemma 2, a 27B-parameter version of its open model, launching in June

This is a great example of a company using generative AI to open its software to more users.

Google TalkBack will use Gemini to describe images for blind people