The Robinhood app went live in 2015 with zero-commission stock trading at a moment when Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and E*TRADE were charging $9.99 per trade. The legacy brokerages dismissed it as a venture-subsidized stunt. Four years later, in October 2019, Schwab eliminated its commission structure entirely — followed within weeks by TD Ameritrade and E*TRADE. Robinhood had permanently changed the economics of retail brokerage for 23 million monthly transacting users and several trillion dollars in managed assets across the entire industry. The company generates $2.97 billion in annual revenue not from commissions but from three distinct mechanisms. Payment for Order Flow — selling retail order flow to market makers like Citadel Securities — produced $1.2 billion in transaction-based revenue in FY2024, earning an estimated 10 to 15 cents per share in rebates from market makers through proprietary smart order routing algorithms. Net Interest Income from $85 billion in uninvested customer cash generated $1.33 billion by capturing a 450-basis-point spread: earning 5.0 percent from money market funds while paying users 0.5 to 3.5 percent on uninvested cash. The third mechanism — Gold subscriptions, margin lending, and premium features — adds the balance. Revenue grew from $1.35 billion in 2022 to $1.86 billion in 2023 to $2.97 billion in 2024. Net income of $1.3 billion in 2024 — a 24 percent margin — reflects a business that has moved well past the venture-subsidized growth phase. The $240 billion in customer assets held on the platform, across equities, options, and cryptocurrencies for 23 million monthly transacting users, creates a deposit-like base whose interest economics scale with both asset growth and interest rate levels. The GameStop short squeeze of January 2021 — when Robinhood halted trading in GameStop and AMC shares as clearing house margin requirements temporarily exceeded available capital — was the company's closest brush with existential crisis. The halt triggered congressional hearings, regulatory scrutiny, and a customer backlash that required years of rebuilding trust. CEO Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt navigated through it, and the company went public in 2020 with a direct listing that itself demonstrated unconventional thinking about capital markets structure.