Robinhood Raises Cool $660M in Extended Funding Round

Unicorn trading app Robinhood has taken over $600 million in an extended funding round as it rides the summer’s retail trading wave.

• Reuters reported Wednesday that Robinhood had raised a total of $660 million in its latest Series G round.
• The trading app, which lists some cryptocurrencies, took commits from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital, and D1 Capital Partners.
• The round had originally raised $460 million, but was extended when D1 Capital offered to invest a further $200 million.
• That last-minute commit has taken Robinhood's valuation upwards of $11.7 billion, a spokesperson told Reuters.
• The funding will be used to support core products and roll out a cash management and recurring investment feature.
• Robinhood said it will also improve its customer experience after a year with a number of outages – the latest being earlier this month – that have rendered the app temporarily unusable.
• Retail-orientated platforms like Robinhood have enjoyed a surge of usage during the pandemic as people working from home have piled into stocks betting on a quick market recovery.
• Some have accused Robinhood of failing to protect its customers by offering complex products to amateurs.
• A 20-year-old student committed suicide in June after thinking he had got himself into more than $700,000 worth of debt from trading sophisticated options.
• It later transpired the negative balance was a temporary blip before the contract executed.
• Still, Wednesday's raise shows finance apps are thriving as the next generation of unicorns.
• Earlier this year, digital bank Revolut raised $500 million in a Series D, taking its total valuation up to $5.5 billion.

See also: Robinhood May Face $10M SEC Fine Over Disclosure Failures