Robinhood to Lay Off 9% of Employees as Growth Slows

By Kate Irwin

Brokerage app Robinhood is laying off 9% of its workforce, according to a statement from CEO Vlad Tenev today.

Tenev called the decision "necessary," citing a change in Robinhood customers' behavior.

"We're anticipating and being responsive to changes in the way our customers invest—especially during this time of global conflict, economic uncertainty, and high inflation," Tenev said in the blog post. He also stated that Robinhood is prioritizing "internal opportunities for automation" wherever possible and that there were many at the company with "duplicate roles and job functions."

From 2020 until mid-2021, Tenev said Robinhood went through a period of "hyper growth," in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, low interest rates, and stimulus checks. With so many people bored at home with extra cash, it was easy to spend money on the Robinhood app.

Now, as the world begins easing pandemic restrictions, Robinhood's growth is slowing down. During Q4 of 2021, Robinhood's most recent reporting period, it tallied $363 million in total revenue—down from its Q2 and Q3 numbers.

But Robinhood says it has a plan to increase profitability.

"We will continue to accelerate our product momentum through 2022 and will introduce key new products across Brokerage, Crypto, and Spending/Saving," Tenev said.

And though somewhere in the range of 300 to 350 are being laid off, it's also still listing a number of open positions, including 12 different crypto-related roles listed across its compliance, engineering, legal, marketing, operations, and product teams.

The news comes just a few weeks after Robinhood announced it was adding Lightning Network support for Bitcoin transactions. This month, Robinhood also added a number of new cryptocurrencies to its platform, allowing users to buy Solana, Compound, Polygon's MATIC token, and Shiba Inu, the latter of which saw prices pump 20% after being listed on the platform.

As to which departments or roles at Robinhood suffered from layoffs, some in the company's HR and Learning and Development teams have shared that they were let go.

But with most employers still hiring, some ex-employees may not be out of work for long. A number of financial and crypto companies chimed in to share open roles, including Kraken, Block's Square, and Uniswap Labs.

Robinhood declined to comment.

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