CANNES — Robinhood inventory hit the $100 mark for the primary time, capping off per week of recent all-time highs and renewed investor confidence. Shares closed up 6.12% Wednesday at $97.98.
Shares are actually monitoring their finest efficiency since April, up greater than 30% for the reason that buying and selling app was snubbed from the S&P 500.
The milestone follows a significant strategic swing in Europe, the place Robinhood unveiled its most formidable crypto growth so far — one geared toward re-engineering the monetary infrastructure itself.
At an occasion held in a Belle Époque mansion alongside the French Riviera, Robinhood executives laid out a imaginative and prescient to carry hundreds of tokenized shares, ETFs, and personal equities totally on-chain.
“This presentation and these merchandise are dual-purpose,” CEO Vlad Tenev instructed CNBC in Cannes. “The primary function is clearly to ship nice merchandise to customers, however I believe the second function is to only reveal very concretely how nice it may very well be if crypto expertise and conventional monetary providers may totally merge.”
To that finish, Robinhood has began quietly constructing its personal blockchain, utilizing Ethereum scaling tech to help 24/5 buying and selling. It additionally launched tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX — firms not publicly listed — to European customers, marking a shift in how and the place retail buyers can achieve publicity to high tech names.
“We thought we might simply ship,” Tenev mentioned. “We do not wish to do a lot speaking. We wish to simply put product in clients’ palms.”
Robinhood Crypto normal supervisor Johann Kerbrat echoed that sentiment, saying the corporate is simply getting began.
“Sooner or later, we expect we will broaden this to hundreds of tokens that signify various kinds of monetary devices — from U.S. shares and worldwide equities to non-public fairness,” he mentioned. “What we confirmed in the present day with SpaceX and OpenAI is only a glimpse of what we’re planning — there’s rather more to come back.”
Robinhood’s income rose 50% year-over-year in Q1, and the corporate simply this week launched staking within the U.S. — a function that had beforehand been blocked by regulators.
WATCH: Robinhood Crypto GM discusses digital asset staking launch for eligible U.S. clients
