Robinhood Shares Surge On Investment From FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried

Robinhood Markets HOOD shares are jumping higher in after-hours trading Thursday.

What Happened: A new 13D filing from Robinhood shows that Emergent Fidelity Technologies and Sam Bankman-Fried own 56,273,469 shares of Robinhood. The position represents a 7.6% ownership stake in the company.

Emergent Fidelity Technologies counts Bankman-Fried as the sole owner and does not appear to be affiliated with Fidelity, which some outlets are claiming.

The filing shows May 2 as the date required to be filed and references April 29 as the date the shares outstanding were calculated, suggesting the timing of the purchase.

“The reporting persons acquired the shares in the belief that the shares represent an attractive investment. The reporting persons intend to hold the shares as an investment, and do not currently have any intention of taking any action toward changing or influencing the control of the issuer,” the filing reads.

The filing says the parties who acquired the shares could acquire additional shares.

Related Link: Robinhood Q1 Earnings Highlights: EPS And Revenue Miss, Monthly Active Users Fall, Company Remains Optimistic Of New Features

Why It’s Important: Bankman-Fried is best known as the founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange.

Robinhood has boosted its cryptocurrency offerings and could have opportunities to partner with FTX down the road, although that was not part of the filing.

Bankman-Fried has been critical of Robinhood in the past with many tweets covering the height of Robinhood halting the trading of certain stocks like GameStop Corp GME.

In January 2021, Bankman-Fried mentioned Robinhood was self-destructing.

Another tweet in February 2021 saw Bankman-Fried agreeing with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy over criticism of Robinhood after interviewing the company’s founder Vlad Tenev.

“I don’t think Robinhood did something evil. I think they did something incompetent: they weren’t prepared for heavy usage. But for them to say they handled it *well* is f***ed up,” Bankman-Fried tweeted.

Another tweet from Bankman-Fried highlighted that FTX was built by traders, for traders, while showing that on Robinhood you could no longer buy GameStop shares, but only sell.

HOOD Price Action: Robinhood shares are up 36% to $11.64 in after-hours trading.