Free Stock Trading App Robinhood Gets Over $320 Million to Raise Total Valuation at $7.6 Billion

Free Stock Trading App Robinhood Raises $323M Now Valued at $7.6B

Free stock-trading start-up Robinhood is now valued at $7.6 billion after closing its most recent, late-stage funding round. The Menlo Park, California-based company, which offers commission-free stock and cryptocurrency trading, announced a $323 million Series E round led by DST Global on Monday, Reuters reports.

Ribbit Capital, NEA, Sequoia and Thrive Capital are also notable venture capital firms which also participated in the round.

The company which is now six years old, says the new funding will be used to

“keep pursuing its mission of democratizing finance for all.”

Last year, Robinhood's $363 million funding round brought its valuation to $5.6 billion. The company which was started in 2013, has added several new features to its platform in the last year to justify the valuation increase, including its own clearing system, Clearing by Robinhood. The business also acquired a media startup to launch Robinhood Snacks, which provides short tidbits of financial news.

The company first shook up the brokerage space in 2013 with commission-free trading. Major incumbents like Charles Schwab and Fidelity have battled for lower fees since. The start-up is stepping even further into traditional finance and earlier this year, submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, for a national bank charter. Robinhood hired the former CEO Wedbush Bank and Merchants Bank of California, Scott Racusin, to oversee the project and eventually be president and CEO of the proposed bank.

According to CoinDesk Robinhood went through an eye-popping growth spurt last year. It jumped from 4 million users in the summer to more than 6 million users by the end of 2018. Founders and co-CEOs, Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev, have repeatedly said Robinhood’s long-term strategy involves public listing.

The Robinhood Crypto app has been available to New York residents since May as the company obtained the BitLicense earlier this year.

Robinhood has raised more than $860 million in venture capital funding to date.

Do you believe Robinhood is worth $7.6 billion? Let us know in the comments section.