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Vlad Tenev

Executive

Type
Person
Role
Executive
Updated

The profile

Robinhood co-founder and chief executive during the 2020–2021 retail-trading surge, the January 2021 GameStop trading restrictions and the February 2021 House "Game Stopped?" hearing.

Identity and role

Vladimir "Vlad" Tenev co-founded Robinhood Markets, Inc. with Baiju Bhatt in 2013. Robinhood's July 2021 IPO prospectus lists him as co-founder, chief executive officer and president, and as chair of the board since March 2021. Robinhood's pandemic story is the retail-trading one: commission-free trading, record account growth and the January 2021 meme-stock squeeze.

Biography / career arc

Tenev holds a B.S. in mathematics from Stanford University and an M.S. in mathematics from UCLA. Before Robinhood he started two finance companies in New York City. He and Bhatt served as co-CEOs and co-presidents from 2013 until November 2020, when Tenev became sole chief executive and president. CNBC described Robinhood at its IPO as "the free trading pioneer" that "forced the brokerage industry to drop commissions on retail trading."

Pandemic role

Robinhood's net cumulative funded accounts rose 130% to 22.5 million in the second quarter of 2021, from 9.8 million a year earlier, and monthly active users rose 109% to 21.3 million. Beginning January 28, 2021, according to the company's IPO filings, its clearing broker, Robinhood Securities, "temporarily restricted or limited its customers' purchase of certain securities, including GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc.," because the National Securities Clearing Corporation had raised its deposit requirements in the market volatility. Robinhood said it knew of about 50 putative class actions over the restrictions by the time of its S-1. On February 18, 2021 Tenev testified at the House Financial Services Committee's virtual hearing "Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide," alongside the chief executives of Citadel, Melvin Capital and Reddit and Keith Gill.

Their own relief

No PPP loan to Robinhood Markets, its brokerage subsidiaries or Tenev appears in the SBA's PPP loan-level data, which runs through September 30, 2024.

On June 30, 2021 Robinhood Financial resolved a set of FINRA investigations on a no-admit, no-deny basis, covering system outages, its options product and margin-related communications with customers. The resolution included a $57.0 million fine, customer restitution of about $12.6 million, a censure and an independent consultant. It did not cover FINRA's inquiries into the January 2021 trading restrictions. On December 17, 2020 Robinhood Financial consented, without admitting or denying the allegations, to an SEC cease-and-desist order that closed an investigation of its best-execution and payment-for-order-flow practices and its statements about its sources of revenue; it paid a $65 million fine. That same month the Massachusetts Securities Division filed a complaint alleging state securities-law violations, including breach of the state's fiduciary standard. None of these matters involves PPP.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Robinhood went public on the Nasdaq on July 29, 2021, pricing at $38 a share, the low end of its range; Tenev and Bhatt each sold about $50 million of stock in the offering. S&P Dow Jones Indices announced on September 5, 2025 that Robinhood Markets would join the S&P 500 before the open on September 22, 2025.

Sources

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