[2] The company is named after Robin Hood, based on its mission to "provide everyone with access to the financial markets, not just the wealthy", with no commissions or minimum account balances.

[6] Robinhood was founded in April 2013 by Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, who had previously built high-frequency trading platforms for financial institutions in New York City.

[20] In August that year, the company announced additional layoffs of 23% of its workforce, mostly in operations, marketing and program management.

Investors included Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Howard Lindzon, Aaron Levie, Dave Morin, Jared Leto, Snoop Dogg, and Nas.

[36] In May 2020, Robinhood raised $280 million in a Series F venture funding round led by Sequoia Capital at a pre-money valuation of $8.3 billion.

[66] In late October 2024 they added access to forecast contracts for the 2024 US Presidential Election using the ForecastEx, an IBKR subsidiary.

[67] In February 2018, after amassing a waitlist of over 2 million customers, Robinhood launched commission-free cryptocurrency trading of bitcoin and Ethereum in several states; availability was expanded later that year.

[75][76] Also in April 2022, the company announced integration of bitcoin's Lightning Network to enable faster transactions involving the cryptocurrency.

[85] In September 2024, Robinhood paid $3.9 million to settle claims by the State of California that customers could not make timely withdrawals of cryptocurrency in their accounts from 2018 to 2022.

[93] In April 2024, Robinhood launched its "Sherwood News" website and a rebrand of its financial newsletter Snacks, with the goal to be a revenue-driving business.

[96][97] In December 2020, Robinhood was sued in a class action lawsuit for failing to disclose to customers that it received payment for order flow.

"[109][110][111] On Monday, March 2, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely due to high trading volumes, Robinhood suffered a systemwide, all-day outage that prevented users from accessing the mobile app during the largest daily point gain of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 2009 and a day when the S&P 500 climbed more than 4.6%.

[117] In March 2023, the company agreed to pay $10 million to settle class action lawsuits regarding trading losses due to the outages.

[118][119][120] In June 2020, 20-year old University of Nebraska student Alexander E. Kearns committed suicide after seeing a negative cash balance of US$730,000 (equivalent to $859,442 in 2023) in his Robinhood margin trading account after the expiration, exercise, and assignment of options positions, likely a bull spread.

[128] On December 16, 2020, the Securities Division of the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth filed an administrative complaint alleging violation of state securities laws by "marketing itself to Massachusetts investors without regard for the best interests of its customers and failing to maintain the infrastructures and procedures necessary to meet the demands of its rapidly growing customer base" and that Robinhood exploits novice investors with gamification.

[129][130] In March 2022, in a win for Robinhood, the Suffolk County Superior Court declared that the new fiduciary duty rule underlying parts of the case was invalid.

[131] In February 2024, the company paid $7.5 million and agreed to overhaul its digital engagement practices to settle the remaining claims.

[138] The decision to halt trading was criticized by customers[139][140] as well as politicians including Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

[141][142][143] The House Committee on Financial Services questioned Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev during a hearing on February 18, 2021.

[150][151] The case was dismissed by the Miami federal court in November 2021 on the grounds that the plaintiffs fell short of providing direct evidence of an antitrust conspiracy and that its terms of service allowed the company to prohibit trading by customers.