robin hood It made its name by bringing commission-free stock trading to a generation of young investors. Now, as they get older and wealthier, they want to take control of their assets.
This strategy advances Robinhood’s goal of acquiring more business from existing users, allowing it to grow total revenue and profits faster than new users joining a mature platform. Wall Street is already seeing that strategy in action. Robinhood had 28 million funded accounts at the end of the June quarter, representing a 7% year-over-year increase, while the company’s average revenue per user increased 24%.
CEO Vlad Tenev explained the strategy in an interview on CNBC’s “Mad Money” that aired Friday, explaining how Robinhood will use trading to draw customers to its platform before expanding its relationships with customers into retirement accounts, financial advice and other wealth management services.
“When you think about active traders as part of our business, it’s really the engine room and the foundation of our business,” Tenev said. “The products we’ve built to serve traders allow us to acquire customers and draw them into products that are perhaps a little less sexy, but more important in the long run.”
Tenev pointed to retirement accounts as an example. The company offers members of its paid membership tier, Robinhood Gold, an amount equal to 3% of eligible IRA retirement savings. He said these accounts are highly portable, allowing workers to keep the same retirement account as they move from one workplace to another, rather than relying on an employer-sponsored 401(k). But those accounts aren’t what bring customers to Robinhood in the first place, he said.
“We actually acquire customers through a variety of means, including prediction markets, stock trading, and cryptocurrencies, but we have actually seen a relatively high rate of adoption of all of our products, opening retirement accounts, and building comprehensive financial relationships once they are on Robinhood,” Tenev said.
Tenev sees the large-scale transfer of wealth across generations as an opportunity to deepen these relationships.
“More than $100 trillion of wealth is being passed down from older generations to younger generations,” Tenev said. “This will be a very large transfer of assets that will accelerate over the coming decades.”
As these clients accumulate wealth, their needs may expand to include trusts, estate planning, private wealth management and private banking, Tenev said.
Robinhood is already building these capabilities through expansions into managed investing, banking, and credit cards. It also acquired portfolio management platform TradePMR in February 2025, and this year began rolling out an advisor network that connects clients with registered investment advisors.
“Our challenge is how can we take these high-quality products for the wealthy and bring them to the mass market at a lower price,” Tenev said.
Investors are beginning to value Robinhood more highly for its opportunities. The stock is up about 6% since the beginning of the year, and has been recovering particularly well in recent months. The stock price has increased about 38% since the beginning of August. Morgan Stanley also recently upgraded Robinhood to overweight and raised its price target from $124 to $150, arguing that Robinhood’s new business could support a longer growth runway.
Analyst Michael Cypris wrote, “HOOD’s expanded product set gives customers more reasons to consolidate their assets on the platform, reducing graduation risk as the primarily Gen Y/Z customer base accumulates wealth and financial complexity.”
For Tenev, the goal is for Robinhood to offer services traditionally reserved for wealthy customers to a broader customer base.
“Before, to get these services, you had to go into a building with big pillars and talk to expensive people in suits,” Tenev said. “With technology, we can make our front doors much larger and open them to tens of millions of people.”
