Robinhood expands, opens new offices in New York and Seattle
Online trading firm Robinhood continues to expand, announcing the opening of new offices on both US coasts – in New York and Seattle – while at the same time indicating that its employees will continue to work remotely through (at least) August 2021.
Silicon Valley based Robinhood stated that achieving its mission starts internally, with the company committed to attracting the best talent from diverse backgrounds and growing its teams to better serve customers. As part of that commitment, Robinhood said it is excited to announce new office locations in New York and Seattle. This expansion will help the company continue to scale to meet customer growth and build great products that meet customers’ needs.
The New York office will enable coast-to-coast market coverage and allow Robinhood to serve customers from the financial hub of the world. In Seattle, the firm plans to build a center of excellence for infrastructure, security, and privacy to accelerate investments in those areas. Expanding presence on both coasts will give the company access to world-class talent markets as it hires actively across engineering, product, operations, design, research, marketing, compliance, and other key functions.
“Our new offices will enable us to scale to meet our ambitious goals and offer more for our customers,” said Surabhi Gupta, VP of Engineering. “We are delighted to join the vibrant New York and Seattle communities and look forward to welcoming more diverse talent with experience spanning finance, technology, and beyond.”
Robinhood further said that the health and safety of its employees is a top priority, as the company determines when it will begin a phased return to offices. Its COVID-19 taskforce is closely monitoring local indicators, and as of now, the company expects to continue working remotely through August 2021. Longer-term, Robinhood expects to embrace a distributed workforce model, with some teams working remotely and others coming into an office full- or part-time. The company said it is actively hiring for across all of its offices while it continues to work remotely, including New York and Seattle.
The new moves come after a tumultuous late January and early February for Robinhood, as the company’s clients were active traders of heavily shorted US equities in what is now known as the Wallstreetbets Short Squeeze. The short squeeze – which saw some retail traders make a killing while others lost in the mad scramble of share trading in GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and other names – led Robinhood itself to raise an additional $3.4 billion of equity to deal with increased capital commitments, and then call for a change to real time settlement of equity trades.