Robinhood’s Monthly User Numbers Continue to Dip

Robinhood’s monthly active user (MAU) base continues to shrink.

The trading platform announced Wednesday (Sept. 13) that its MAUs for August came to 10.6 million. That’s down from 11 million at the close of July, and 13.3 million from August 2022.

The news follows Robinhood’s earnings report from last month, in which the company posted its first quarterly profit, but also revealed that it lost a million MAUs in the quarter, to 10.8 million, down from 14 million for the same quarter in 2022. At the time, PYMNTS, wrote, Robinhood was at its lowest MAU level in the past nine quarters.

The company’s user growth in the Wednesday report — as measured by net cumulative funded accounts — was flat, remaining at 22.2 million in July and August and up just 1% year over year.

Writing about the user decline last month, PYMNTS noted that in its previous quarterly earnings report, Robinhood’s leadership had emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence (AI), with CEO Vlad Tenev claiming that “every company will have to transition into an AI company.”

But there was little mention of the company’s AI efforts this time out, even as companies invest in improved AI chatbots meant to streamline customer interactions.

“These tools represent a revolutionary step in conversational AI, as well as one of the best use cases to date of generative AI’s foundational large language models (LLMs), and could be an opportunity area for Robinhood to develop robo advisory services, one of the more talked about innovations for AI within the retail trading landscape,” PYMNTS wrote.

Asked about the company’s AI plans last month, Tenev offered no specifics but did restate his belief that “every company will need to become an AI company.”

Meanwhile, Robinhood earlier this month won court approval to repurchase shares from Sam Bankman-Fried’s Emergent Fidelity Technologies.

The $607 million deal came after Robinhood’s shares were seized by the U.S. government following the bankruptcy filing of Emergent Fidelity Technologies and Bankman-Fried’s FTX.

The company disclosed the deal in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), saying it entered into the share purchase agreement with the U.S. Marshalls Service.