Vlad Tenev
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
2013 – Present
13 years (current)
Key Decisions & Impact
Tenev, who moved to the US from Bulgaria at age five, met co-founder Baiju Bhatt at Stanford and built two high-frequency trading technology firms with him before founding Robinhood in 2013 to challenge the $10-per-trade brokerage model with commission-free trading. As CEO, he has steered Robinhood from a single-product trading app through its 2021 IPO and meme-stock-era scrutiny into a broader financial platform spanning crypto, retirement accounts, cash management, credit cards, and advisory services.
Legacy
Under Tenev, Robinhood's revenue grew from a $541 million net loss in FY2023 to $1.883 billion in net income on $4.473 billion of revenue in FY2025, driven substantially by crypto trading volume and the company's expansion into higher-margin adjacent financial products. He also led Robinhood's 2021 IPO, one of the most anticipated fintech listings of that year, and later oversaw a major strategic pivot toward crypto trading and prediction markets as core growth drivers after the initial commission-free equities model matured and faced compressed monetization following Payment for Order Flow scrutiny from regulators. He has continued serving as CEO through Robinhood's transition to sustained GAAP profitability, a milestone that took years longer than many fintech peers expected given the company's early reliance on volatile trading-volume-driven revenue.