Robinhood Debuts Sherwood Media to Cover Finance News

Trading platform Robinhood is getting deeper into the news business.

The company, which has long offered the financial newsletter Snacks, said Tuesday (Jan. 17) it had formed Sherwood Media, a subsidiary that “will be a home for news and information about the markets, economics, business, technology, and the culture of money.”

The site will be led by Joshua Topolsky, founder and former editor-in-chief of The Verge and co-creator of its parent company Vox Media. He is also the former chief digital content officer for Bloomberg.

“The story of money is the story of culture — from sports and entertainment to the biggest business and tech news of the day, to geopolitics and beyond,” Topolsky said. “These stories don’t just live in a terminal; they play out in our lives every day.”

Sherwood Media plans to launch a suite of new editorial offerings throughout the year, the release said. In an interview with Axios on Tuesday, Topolsky said he plans to hire dozens of staffers, including editors, reporters and social media content creators.

He said he also plans to launch newsletters devoted to specific areas of business and finances, such as ones that cover higher-profile companies like Disney.

Robinhood launched Snacks in 2012. In an earnings call in 2021, the company announced its first big content distribution deal with Snapchat, making Robinhood Snacks available to the millions on that social media platform.

The headlines dealing with Robinhood of late have typically involved collapsed crypto firm FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried wants Robinhood stock seized by the U.S. returned to him, arguing the shares are his property.

Bankman-Fried’s attorneys said the shares are not part of the FTX bankruptcy case, nor is the company that owns them — Emergent Fidelity Technology, of which Bankman-Fried owns 90%.

The lawyers said in a court filing earlier this month that while FTX debtors have failed to show that they would be “irreparably injured” by denial of the claim to the shares, Bankman-Fried needs some of the assets to fund his criminal defense.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried has not been found criminally or civilly liable for fraud, and it is improper for the FTX Debtors to ask the Court to simply assume that everything Mr. Bankman-Fried ever touched is presumptively fraudulent,” his lawyers said in a court filing.

Robinhood’s CEO has said he’s not sure what Bankman-Fried will do with his shares, assuming he gets access to them.

“I’m not surprised that it’s one of the more valuable assets they have on their balance sheet because it is public company’s stock,” Vlad Tenev said last month in a Bloomberg interview.

“We don’t have a lot of information that you guys don’t have,” he said. “We’re just watching this unfold and … it’s going to be locked up in bankruptcy proceedings, most likely for some time. And so we’re just kind of seeing how that plays out.”