I am Vlad Tennv, the founder of Robin

Hood.

We're talking about Robin Hood. The

stock's more than doubled since its last

report.

>> It stock surged 180% this year after

nearly doubling in 2024. The

>> shares of the trading platform now up

more than 400% in the last year.

>> Glad your presence there speaks volumes.

Robin Hood Gold, which hit a record 3.5

million subscribers. Most financial

services get worse the more money you

have, but we wanted to kind of invert

that.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome

Robin Hood CEO Vlad Tenner,

[Music]

>> my guy.

>> Good to see you, brother.

>> Good to see you.

>> Good to see you.

>> You're the reason Jake Health's here. I

mean

>> I mean it is a great story.

>> It's so true. Jake Cal bumbles into

eight shares of Robin Hood. Lad builds a

hundred billion dollar companies. It's

unbelievable.

>> I mean people know me for the Uber

investment which four or $5 million

valuation. But there's

>> When do I flip that?

>> Well, yeah, it's going to take a little

more. I think you got 20x left to go.

But

>> wait, was JL the third or fourth

investor in Robin Hood? It was $20

million valuation, but it's a good

story, I think, because you hadn't

launched. And we're at Antonio's

Nutouse. I went for a drink with my

friend Ado. He brought his college

roommate, Elon. We're hanging out at

Antonio's Nut House in Palo Alto. Rest

in peace, Antonio.

>> Keep dropping these names. One second.

>> So Vlad comes over. We we Vlad and I

knew each other a little bit. And Vlad

pitches me on this idea and he says,

"Um, I'm a quant." I said, "What's a

quant?" He said, "Quant analysis." I

said, "Yeah, I heard of it. Um, hit me

with the idea." And then he goes, "Is

that Elon Musk?" I said, "Yeah, just hit

me with the idea. I know you got a

startup." He says, "Well, I I want to

get

uh this generation, these millennials,

these Gen Z's. I want to get them to

trade stocks." I said, "Love it. They

don't care about like getting a driver's

license. They they don't they're still

on their mom and dad's Netflix. You're

going to try to get people who don't

care about the future to trade stocks?"

He says, "Yeah." I said, "What's the

business model?" I said, "This is the

best part. We're going to let him trade

for free." So I said, "Okay, let me

repeat this back to you, kid. You want

to get a group of people who don't have

any interest in the future to trade

stocks and then

>> we have 30 seconds.

>> You're going to make money. You're going

to make money.

>> Thank you, Vlad."

>> I said, "I'm in. I'm in."

>> Not only that, but he said, "This is

probably the best idea you'll ever

have."

>> I did say that to him, too. I was like,

"This is the best idea. What if it

works?" And here we are 10 years later.

what's worked.

>> And last week you were added to the S&P

500.

>> I was

>> last week or yesterday? Two days ago.

>> It was Friday.

>> I mean, what a huge accomplishment.

>> Thank you.

>> I mean, I think I think it was cuz I

rejected you for a job, right?

>> It you heard about that.

>> This is a series.

>> Thank you guys for upgrading me, by the

way. I guess that that's been the best

part of being added to the S&P going

from just a Jason interview to to the

whole squad.

>> We were doing the rehearsal yesterday

and everyone wanted to do the the

interview, so we said, "Let's all do it

together."

>> Why don't we all get in here? Can I uh

let's let's maybe start. So look, you've

built an incredible business. Um there's

a part of it that looks like the you

know what comes after the Erades of the

world etc. But there's an enormous other

part of your business and there's all

these emergent paths. I want to just

start by double clicking in something

that you announced a few months ago in

France and maybe you want to talk us

through it what the goal was. You got a

lot of support but you got a lot of

blowback as well. There was a lot of

people that were like, "Wow, this is a

little too disruptive tokenizing these

stocks, putting them on the blockchain."

Maybe talk us through the business and

then just double click on that narrow

thing so we can understand what you're

up to.

>> Yeah. So, we had an event in in the

south of France that we called to catch

a token. And the idea behind that event

was we wanted to show what Robin Hood,

the app, the platform would look like if

it was built from the ground up on

crypto technology. So what that looked

like was stocks on blockchains. Uh

obviously we added a bunch of

cryptonnative features like pers. Um we

launched in now 31 countries. And then

uh we also wanted to demonstrate to the

US what the power of putting traditional

financial services on blockchains was.

And to me, I think a lot of people talk

about 24/7 stock trading, instant

settlement, these things that do have

real value, but I think the most

powerful thing is taking inaccessible,

illlquid assets and making them

available. And and so we we were

actually, I think, the first to tokenize

OpenAI and SpaceX and we made that

available to our retail customers in

Europe in the form of a giveaway. and

and that was very very exciting, you

know, not not without its controversy,

but I felt like it was such a powerful

thing.

>> How do you do it? How did you enable

that?

>> It's actually very similar to uh

stablecoin in a way. So, if you're a

stable coin issuer, and this it's a

little bit oversimplifying, but you can

think of it as we keep some dollars or

treasuries in a bucket over here. uh we

mint and burn tokens against that bucket

but back at one to one and the tokens

can actually trade publicly on a variety

of of blockchains. So it's just

extending that token that that

tokenization concept from stable coins

to uh public and and private.

>> So you had to go and secure your own

block of SpaceX and OpenAI stock and

>> and then put it somewhere. Were the

companies okay with it? Um, it depends.

Uh, I think I think that, uh, I'll say a

couple of things. Um, I think a lot of

people are okay with it in principle,

but if you're a company and you're

focused on your mission like OpenAI is,

and you hear about some new thing, uh,

it's kind of a distraction. So, I I

don't really blame them for tokeniz

tokenization or private access not being

their their top priority, but I did want

to be the first to tokenize open AI. So,

uh

>> did Sam give you a call?

>> Uh I have had a couple conversations

with with Sam before and after.

>> Um cuz yeah, he's a spicy individual.

What was his take? Did he tell you to

stop?

>> Um I think that actually uh I I'd like

to think we get along quite well. I

think he understood why we were doing

it. Again, the distraction aspect when

they have so much going on uh is is a

real thing. But at the end of the day,

>> where do you take it from here? Are you

going to go and get 50, 100 of these

well-known private companies? Is that

the goal? Is it every private company?

How like what do you do from here to

build on top of it?

>> Yeah. So, we we've been hard at work

trying to figure out how to do it in the

US. I think that's that's uh everyone's

interested in that since the France

announcement. obviously expanding what

we do in Europe as well and there will

probably be different mechanisms in the

US and and in Europe at least for some

time but uh yeah you you should expect

that we go bigger and deeper into the

space and have plenty of things to do in

the future.

>> I'm curious what the relationship has

been with the new administration. the

last administration, you know, was not

very pro- innovation, crypto, and now

you got David uh running that

specifically. How has the change in the

administration changed how you look at

innovation at Robin Hood? And then Sax,

I'm sure you have some follow-up

questions here.

>> Yeah, it's been very positive. I mean,

just uh by nature of how many times I've

been to Washington, uh the last

administration

didn't invite me to the White House

once. Uh, I asked for meetings and they

wouldn't even meet in person. They were

all working remotely uh until I think

2023, early 2024. Um,

>> it was funny how remote work kind of

broke down along political lines. It's

sort of like the the Republicans wanted

to get back into the office.

>> I think you're referring to remote work

as not working.

>> I mean, that is uh I wasn't going to say

it, but uh yeah. Um,

yeah, it was funny how that works out,

but it's it's been very positive. I

mean, last administration,

we were playing a lot of defense. It was

just sort of like one enforcement action

and we had a wells notice and all

aspects of our business were sort of

under assault. So I think the most

direct thing was when that went away, we

had to think, okay, well there the

administration now wants to work with us

rather than just trying to attack us

from all these angles. And for a while

we didn't even know how to operate in

that environment because we were just

completely not used to it.

>> Yeah, you were on your

>> Have you met with Elizabeth Warren?

>> Uh I have not. No, I just receive

letters from time to time. But

>> she really But she hates you. Well, I

told me personally, she really can't

take it.

>> No, the reason the reason I asked is

what is the core motivation of the idea

of we need to enforce, we need to kind

of restrict, we need to prohibit. Is it

consumer protection that the belief is

that systems like yours that are more

open, more accessible, more usable, more

consumers will trade more and

potentially lose money and therefore

they have to try and play a role in

restricting consumer access to these

markets and these marketplaces. and

that's what they're mo ultimately kind

of driving towards or do you think that

there's something more vested

interestwise that's motivating?

>> I mean I think I think there's probably

both. Certainly consumer protection is

the stated reason but obviously these

folks have funders and backers and lots

of interests. I mean there's powerful

there's powerful financial services

companies in the state of Massachusetts.

So, I don't know what's happening behind

the scenes, but you know, I do think the

consumer protection angle is what

they're kind of

>> pulling out. How do you Yeah. How do you

look at this type of innovation and your

role at the White House to support it

and to foster it while still, you know,

having some rules on the field?

>> Well, I think Vlad's uh vision around

tokenization is very exciting. I like

you wrote a oped I think it's in the

Washington Post that I thought was very

good on this this topic. We now have a

regulatory framework in place the Genius

Act which the president signed in July

that creates um the the the the set of

rules for stable coins which are just

tokenized dollars. And like Vlad's

saying if you can tokenize a dollar you

can tokenize anything. You just

basically create a reserve of that asset

in a secure account at a bank somewhere

or a broker and then you mint tokens on

a onetoone basis. So I think it's very

exciting is there's no reason why we

can't tokenize. Let's start with public

securities. I think that's the easy case

because with public companies there's

already disclosure requirements. There's

an abundance of information and anybody

can buy a public security, right?

Because of those disclosure

requirements. Um and the companies don't

really care who their stockholders are,

right? I mean because they know that the

public owns these securities. So what we

could get right away with tokenized

securities, public securities is like

you were saying a 24/7 global

marketplace uh with instantaneous

blockchain based settlement and that

could be really exciting. There's no

reason why trading has to be on this

like 9-to-F5 exchange with all this, you

know, we could enable stocks to trade as

easily as you, you know, transfer a a

stable coin. Now the private security

part is interesting that that is I think

more complicated because first of all

the companies like you're saying they do

care who their shareholders are and they

do generally restrict those things and

that's why you probably got the phone

call from Sam and then the regulators

care also because there's not as much

public disclosure. So they there's more

uh of an impetus to protect the public.

By the way I'm not saying we can't get

there on private securities. Um about a

decade ago a ago I founded

a startup to tokenize uh real estate

called Harbor and we were just way too

far ahead of the curve but that that was

basically to to um tokenize uh private

real estate securities. So I think we

can get there but I think the place to

start that would be really exciting

would just be like let's do the public

securities first because it's easy or

easier from a regulatory standpoint and

then we can work our way into private.

>> Yeah, it's certainly easier

technologically. I mean, we we've we've

made both uh available to some extent in

the EU. Um I think private could be more

meaningful long term and I I'll I'll

tell you why I think so. If you look at

the technologies that are transforming

society right now and that we feel so

optimistic about over the next 5 years,

it's AI and to some extent, you know,

space exploration. And I think with AI

in particular, there's a lot of fear

right now. I mean, you talk to a random

person on the street, more than half the

time, they're a little bit nervous about

what AI is going to do to them. Now,

imagine the scenario if you know 20 to

30% of someone's net worth is in AI

companies. Now, suddenly they're not

fighting against this thing. They want

it to succeed because if AI succeeds

>> entrepreneurship as a way to let more

people participate in the boom.

>> Yeah. Because I worry about the status

quo. I mean these AI companies in

particular are getting into valuations

of hundreds and hundreds of billions

with zero retail ownership. And that

technology could completely disrupt you

know how normal people live their lives.

And we actually expect it to drive that

sort of disruption because if if you

look at Cathy's presentation, you know,

you're talking about negative inflation,

high GDP growth rates, giant

productivity improvements. I don't think

you're going to get there without some

significant labor force disruption.

>> Okay. So what do you need from let's say

the US government broadly whether it's

the SEC or whether it's maybe new

legislation on Capitol Hill what what

exactly do you need to bring about this

revolution?

>> I think I think uh relaxation of

accreditation uh standards towards more

self-certification. you you mentioned uh

a test. Um I think a test I consider to

be one form of self-certification,

but the simplest form is just someone

saying, "I understand the risks. I

understand I could lose 100% of what I

put in this investment." You could even

put like a skull and crossbones.

>> No crying in the casino.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> You could put somebody crying in the

casino. Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Literally in the app.

>> No crying in the casino. I think

>> I guess I mean the point you're making

is you can't on the one hand cry for

access and on the other hand cry in the

casino.

>> Exactly.

>> Can't do that.

>> But the executive order on 401k access I

think was a step in the right direction.

So we could also ease into it by

extending that to individual retirement

accounts which are great short-term

vehicles and then give it to

>> you need a secured interest. Why can't

you just create a synthetic or like a

fast contract saying if and when open AI

goes public cuz you can see how many

shares there are. You know what the

legal registration of the corporation

is. Can't you create like a synthetic

contract that just trades the value of

the stock and ultimately needs to settle

at some point after the company goes

public?

>> We can't do that currently. Uh and and

OpenAI in particular is a tricky one

because yeah, pick any other LLC or C or

something, right? Um but yeah, we're

we're continuing to look at all angles,

but I I think some clarity would be

helpful

>> because this is the whole value of of

like sorry Chimat, but like futures

markets and prediction markets is you

can effectively create a synthetic on

some underlying without actually having

ownership or a secured interest in the

underlying or delivery of the commodity.

You could basically just say when this

thing goes public, it's above 20 bucks a

share, below 20 bucks a share on some

number of days after something like

that. But I mean I guess one one

question for you is is that where

prediction markets can take us?

>> So um the the difference within with

prediction markets is you can create a

prediction market but it has to have an

expiry date for the contract. So for

example we have a prediction market live

on the platform now about which

companies are going to IPO. You could do

something like that. There have been

prediction markets uh in the past, not

on our platform, but some other

platforms that make a market around the

IPO price, but if you just want exposure

to underlying equity in a private, I I

don't think we can do that.

>> How do you think about, you know, the

one criticism people have had, which is,

hey, we have got a young generation.

They're frisky. They want to take all

this risk. They want to bet. and your

responsibility as a platform that is

giving that access if you're the on-ramp

the education you give and and I

remember with the options and people

being able to short you you came up with

an incredibly elegant solution when you

try to short something you give people a

test you give them education in that

moment before they do it so so how do

you think broadly about young people

getting into wagering they're playing

cards you know they're they're betting

on fantasy football and doing sports

betting, but they also want to, you

know, have their hand in crypto and in

puts and calls and and and pretty

sophisticated stuff. So, what's your

responsibility as a platform then in

introducing them to those sophisticated

>> um ways of betting and investing?

>> I have a lot of thoughts actually when

uh you interviewed me for a job in uh

2008, which by the way was the only it

was one of two like final job interviews

that I got. Most people just rejected

me. I never even got a call from from uh

from Google or any of the others, but uh

it was either Weather Bill, later

Climate Corp, uh or Optiver, where I

interviewed to be an options trader. Um

so I got very very close.

>> We had a math team.

>> Yeah, I got very close.

>> Was he like in the interview?

>> He you probably don't even remember.

>> You remember Alex Machulka? Yeah, I

think he was uh he

>> um

>> I forget my recruiter's name, but that

guy was great. Anyway, um and then I

became an entrepreneur. So uh it might

not surprise you to

know that me personally uh I'm I'm sort

of like adverse to control on the level

of risk that I would take because my

entire career path was sort of like

maximally levered bet on one company

which is the one that I started.

>> Um so I would be reluctant to discourage

people from being entrepreneurs to doing

what they want to do with their money or

time. Of course, I'm I'm in favor of

like reasonable things like you should

it should be clear to you what you're

investing in. Um but yeah, generally

speaking, I think if it's available to

wealthy people, high netw worth

individuals, it should be made available

to retail as well.

>> Let me broaden the conversation. Um it

used to be historically we would have

banks, we would have brokerages, we'd

have payment processors, we'd have

merchant acquirers. They were all

disagregated. They could all be public.

they could all build thriving companies.

Now with stable coins and everything

else, there's this creeping convergence.

You're issuing a credit card. Coinbase

has a credit card. SoFi has a federal

banking license. Stripe just launched a

new L1 called Tempo.

Everybody's competing with everybody.

Tell us the scope of where you think

Robin Hood goes in the next four or five

years and what the financial landscape

and infrastructure looks like. The

Visas, the Mastercards, the JP Morgans,

what roles do these companies play as

you guys just become more and more

ambitious and girthy and big and you

know market cap and all that stuff.

>> Yeah, I think the industry goes through

periods of consolidation and then

divergence. I think Robin Hood has a

unique advantage which is that our

customers put an increasing amount of

their dollars into Robin Hood. So what

we're thinking about and and it became

pretty clear to us as soon as we rolled

out our second product. We kind of saw

what happened. Customers spent more time

on Robin Hood. The two products help

each other. So for example with

retirement we noticed you know the big

question was well if we launch

retirement is it going to cannibalize

the core brokerage business but what we

saw was the opposite. If someone opens

up a retirement account they they tend

to actually increase the amount they put

in their individual account and we saw

that again with the credit card. If

they're a credit card primary user top

of wallet they actually put more money

into into Robin Hood. So then that gets

us to a future where we ask ourselves,

can we be your comprehensive financial

platform? Can you put your direct

deposit into Robin Hood? Can you put all

of your money into Robin Hood? Can you

get to gold subscriber premium status as

soon as possible? And then can we get

all of your family members onto Robin

Hood as well and your kids? So yeah, I

don't think anyone's really thinking

about it from that angle, but I think

that there's going to be over 130

trillion that changes hands from silent

generation and baby boomers to younger

people. And and I think Robin Hood's

actually very well positioned to be one

of the, if not the number one primary

institution that benefits from that

transfer. We've got over a quarter

trillion assets on the platform already,

which seems like a a big number, but

it's actually just a drop in the bucket

compared to what's going to happen.

>> Where do you see the JP Morgans and the

V Mastercards and Visas? How do they

compete with an elegant product with

hundreds of millions of users that just,

you know, the product velocity that you

have, the risk you're willing to take?

>> Yeah. I mean, I think that uh if if you

think about an incumbent, they have

certain benefits. They're like very

muscular from a regulatory standpoint.

Like they know how to deal with

regulators. They've got global scale.

They've got, you know, tens, hundreds of

millions of customers, lots of assets.

But the disadvantage is that they're

sometimes slow to adopt new

technologies. They don't have the best

engineering teams. They can't move very

fast. Um, and they they can't hire the

best talent. And and so I think that we

don't have those downsides. We have

great talent. We move really quickly. We

use the best technology. We haven't been

super acquisitive historically, even

though we're doing more. And that

prevents us from being bogged down by

these like massive integration things

that take multiple years. Um, and so

it's a question of can we get the

benefits of scale while also maintaining

the nimleness of a technology startup.

Do you want to give the audience before

we run out of time, maybe last question,

but tell them about the LLM you guys are

building? This is a different project

for you.

>> Oh yeah.

>> Um and the goal of that and why you

decided to fund that sort of outside the

scope of Robin Hood.

>> Yeah. So uh he's talking about Harmonic,

which is a company that I started two

years ago and I'm chairman of and uh

completely separate from Robin Hood. and

and basically the goal there is to build

what we call mathematical super intell

intelligence. So this is um mathematical

reasoning that is uh exceeding the

capability of any individual human

researcher. And we we had a pretty cool

result a couple weeks ago where we

announced gold medal level performance

at the international math olympiad which

is the biggest uh mathematics

competition in the world. And and I

think to my knowledge we were the only

formal model.

>> You're the only formal one that got IMO

gold. Yeah.

>> Yeah. So open eye and Gemini. Open eye

Gemini

>> uh did it with informal

>> uh Gemini's in formal model got a silver

last year.

>> Explain why it's going to be so critical

to have a a mathematical super

intelligence model.

>> Yeah. So two reasons. Um one that has to

do with how these models are trained and

the other which is more of a consumer

painoint. The thing that we've figured

out with formal is how to verify that a

statement is true very precisely. And

when you're doing reinforcement learning

of these models, having a strong reward

signal is very helpful because you can

just discard all the data that's not

helpful and train on the high quality

like correct data. And when you're a

user of these AI models, sometimes they

hallucinate. Uh and and this is actually

not just a consumer problem, but also an

enterprise problem because basically if

you're a software engineer using a

coding model, your job has has become

over the past couple of years, it it's

turned from writing a whole bunch of

high-quality code to reviewing LLM

generated code and making sure that

that's correct. So in a world where

you've got, you know, LLMs producing

thousands and thousands of pages of

code, human verification just doesn't

scale, particularly for backend. So we

want to solve that problem.

>> Okay, give it up for David Sax's second

favorite.

[Music]

>> Good to see you guys.

>> Thank you. Thanks, brother.

I'll see you in Vegas.