Robinhood Trading App Seals $280M in Sequoia-Led Round

Popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app Robinhood has surpassed its financing goals by raising $280 million in Series F funding at an $8.3 billion valuation.

Publicly announced May 4, the Series F was led by venture capital firm Sequoia, alongside existing and new investors that included NEA, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital and Unusual Ventures.

Last month, Cointelegraph reported that Robinhood had ostensibly been seeking to raise $250 million at an approximate valuation of $8 billion. 

Alongside traditional equities and options, the app’s commission-free crypto trading service supports major coins such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC), as well as smaller-cap cryptocurrencies like Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Dogecoin (DOGE). 

Appetite for trading surged during March volatility

Robinhood’s raise comes shortly after a series of high-profile outages on its platform this March — one of which purportedly made Robinhood traders miss out on the biggest one-day point gain in the Dow Jones’ history.

The app has nonetheless seen record revenue growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, rising from $20 million in March 2019 to $60 million March 2020. 

In its Series F announcement yesterday, Robinhood said it was “humbled that people are turning to Robinhood” amid “challenging times and market volatility.”

So far in 2020, the app has reportedly added over 3 million funded accounts; half of new users this year are apparently first-time investors. 

The aftermath of the March logjam

At the end of March, Robinhood confirmed it had been contacting users affected by the month’s outages, pledging to reimburse them in dollars at a sum to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

The company has declined to comment on the total number of affected users. It faces at least one federal class lawsuit filed on behalf of several traders following an outage at the start of March.