Robinhood Seeks $250M From Investors

Robinhood, the Menlo Park, California-based stock trading app, is nearing a deal to raise $250 million from investors at a valuation of $8 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Sources told the news service that the investment team is being led by Sequoia Capital, a venture capital company also based in Menlo Park.

This latest round of financing follows last summer’s announcement by Robinhood of $323 million raised in Series E financing at a $7.6 billion valuation. That round was led by DST Global with investors from Ribbit Capital, NEA, Sequoia and Thrive Capital also participating, the company said in a July blog post.

“We’ll use the funding to keep pursuing our mission of democratizing finance for all,” Robinhood said at the time.

Robinhood did not respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment on the reported latest round of funding for the seven-year-old startup, which had more than 10 million customers at the close of 2019. Sequoia could not be reached for comment.

Robinhood’s revenue has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the volatile market has brought more customers to the company, sources told the news service.

In March, the zero-commission app was plagued with outages. The shutdown on March 2 lasted for the entire U.S. trading session. During the outage, the S&P 500 climbed 4.6 percent, Bloomberg wrote.

Last month, PYMNTS reported that the stock-trading app was down on March 9, one week after it went down on one of the busiest trading days of the year. The company later vowed to offer compensation to its users in the form of a $15 discount on subscriptions, with the potential for further offerings in the future.