Robinhood Cuts Staff Again Amid Regulatory Woes, Slowing Demand: Report

Stock trading and investing company Robinhood Markets has announced another round of workforce reductions following two earlier layoffs that affected hundreds of employees at the Menlo Park, California-based company.

The company is eliminating around 150 roles, or about 7% of its workforce, according to an internal message, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. It cited reduced customer trading activity and a slowdown in customer engagement.

The slowdown in trading activity among customers may be attributed to several factors, including increased commodity costs and also a general downturn in the crypto market, Benzinga reported.

The layoffs came just days after Robinhood announced it will acquire no-fee credit card platform X1. "This marks an important step in our journey towards broadening our product offerings and deepening our relationship with existing customers," the company wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told employees in April last year that the company was cutting approximately 9% of its workforce, citing duplication of roles and job functions when the company grew its headcount to nearly 3,800 during the pandemic year. More than 300 workers were affected by the April 2022 layoffs.

"As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me," Tenev wrote at the time.

The investment giant again slashed its workforce by 23% in August 2022, affecting more than 700 workers, TechCrunch estimated.

The three layoffs in the last 14 months came as the financial services company deals with multiple challenges, including an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and a system failure earlier this year that cost the company millions.

In February, Robinhood was subpoenaed by the SEC over its cryptocurrency listings and custody issues. The company said in a filing at the time that the regulator issued the subpoena regarding Robinhood's "cryptocurrency listings, custody of cryptocurrencies, and platform operations."

The subpoena was issued shortly after Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed and more than 100 of the exchange's affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Just earlier this month, Robinhood announced it was delisting crypto assets Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Polygon (MATIC) after the SEC deemed the digital assets securities. The brokerage firm said they will be delisted by Tuesday and the tokens remaining in customer accounts after the deadline "will be sold for market value and the proceeds will be credited to your [customers] Robinhood buying power."

The company also grappled with a system failure in February that cost Robinhood $57 million, reported Fortune.

CFO Jason Warnick said at the time that the glitch was a "processing error" that "caused us to sell shares short into the market." The error was detected early but it still cost the company millions "as we bought back these shares against a rising stock price."

Robinhood reached a $10.2 million settlement with the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) in April for "operational and technical failures that harmed main street investors" following system outages in 2020.

Robinhood joins hundreds of tech companies that laid off employees this year. Nearly 800 tech companies have cut at least 210,721 jobs this year, according to data from layoffs.fyi. Most of the affected sectors are finance, healthcare, transportation and crypto.