Robinhood will open new offices in Seattle and New York City after raising $3.4 billion in fresh capital following a tumultuous past couple of weeks for the budding fintech giant.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company says it plans to build a “significant presence” in the Seattle area. Robinhood has not yet signed an office lease. The company is working remotely through at least August due to the pandemic. It has two open Seattle-based positions.
Its Seattle hub will be “a center of excellence for infrastructure, security, and privacy to accelerate our investments in those areas,” the company said in a blog post. Robinhood has additional satellite offices in five other U.S. cities and London. It employs more than 1,500 people.
Robinhood was at the center of the tech world last month after its app helped fuel the wild stock surges for GameStop, AMC, and others. Its app was downloaded 2.1 million times in just one week alone, up 394% from the previous week.
The company makes it easy — and free — to buy stocks; its motto is to “democratize finance for all.” But that ethos was questioned after it temporarily restricted customers from trading shorted stocks such as GameStop that saw shares surge due in part to retail investors on Reddit. The company drew scrutiny from politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Robinhood needed more cash to help pay clearinghouses to handle the increased deals flowing into its platform. It reeled in a total of $3.4 billion from investors such as Ribbit Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and others. Total funding to date is north of $5 billion for the 7-year-old startup.
Robinhood is the latest Silicon Valley tech company to open a satellite office in the Seattle region. It’s not yet clear how the pandemic and shift in remote work will affect Seattle’s engineering outposts. Companies such as Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft laid off staff when the pandemic first hit.
The Seattle region has a growing cohort of fintech startups, and firms such as Madrona Venture Group are making an effort to expand Seattle as a fintech hub.
