Robinhood to let go 10% of staff as it seeks to become leaner

Robinhood (HOOD) said Tuesday it’s letting go of about 290 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, in the coming weeks, according to a company spokesperson.

The move is intended to “maintain a high performance culture, further accelerate product velocity, and remain lean and disciplined,” according to a regulatory filing signed by CFO Shiv Verma. Robinhood will incur $20 million in severance and restructuring charges, with $8 million in related share-based compensation payments.

In a memo posted on X, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev maintained that the financial and investing app has “never been stronger” and said that the goal of the reduction is “to maximize our talent density and ensure that our culture is defined by an absolute elite performance bar.”

“To achieve the massive scale of our mission, we cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization,” Tenev said. “We must be a lean, hyper-focused team where every single individual is empowered to make a massive impact,” he added

Robinhood stock rose by more than 2% early on Tuesday. Its workforce reduction comes as competitors have also trimmed their headcount in recent months and as the widely popular retail trading platform looks to monetize a number of this year’s biggest attention-grabbing events.

Last Friday, during the early moments of SpaceX’s colossal IPO, about 5,000 Robinhood customers reported issues with the app, according to DownDetector. In response, Robinhood said it had experienced “record breaking traffic.” Bernstein also anticipates the World Cup this summer to be lucrative for the company’s prediction markets offerings.

Early last month, Coinbase Global (COIN) announced plans to lay off 14% of its staff, or about 700 jobs, with CEO Brian Armstrong citing the need to reallocate expenses to adjust to the crypto market rout and the AI era.

Robinhood’s stock is down 13% since the beginning of January. The bulk of that sell-off came in late April when the company missed first quarter revenue estimates from analysts, due in large part to a slump in crypto trading activity compared to the year prior.

In the same earnings report, Robinhood said that its employee count rose 22% from the first quarter of 2025, and its revenue per employee on a yearly basis was $1.4 million, down 8% from the same period.

The company currently has 2,900 employees.

David Hollerith is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance covering the cryptocurrency and stock markets. Follow him on X at @DsHollers.