Robinhood is a developer of an investment platform intended to help teach people to invest in the stock market. The company’s platform offers commission-free trading in stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies, as well as margins, thereby enabling users to invest in the stock market right from their phones or computers.

Robinhood’s story begins almost a decade ago at Stanford, where Baiju and Vlad met as roommates and classmates. After graduation they packed their bags for New York and built two finance companies, selling trading software to hedge funds. With their newfound experience in the world of finance, they realized that big Wall Street firms pay effectively nothing to trade stocks, while most Americans are charged up to $10 for every trade.

They soon decided it was more important to build products that would provide everyone with access to the financial markets, not just the wealthy. Two years after heading to New York, they moved back to California and built Robinhood—a company that leverages technology to encourage everyone to participate in our financial system.

Robinhood raised over $1.3 billion equity financing including  $430 million of Series F venture funding in a deal led by Sequoia Capital on June 1, 2020, putting the company’s post-money valuation at $8.43 billion.