Robinhood cuts 290 jobs at record trading volumes and calls it a win

Robinhood just laid off 290 people, roughly 10% of its workforce, on the same day it reported all-time high average daily trading volumes. That's not a contradiction. That's the point.

CEO Vlad Tenev shared a memo with employees on Tuesday framing the cuts not as a response to weakness, but as a structural decision made from a position of strength. "Robinhood's business has never been stronger," he wrote. "We cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization. We must be a lean, hyper-focused team where every single individual is empowered to make a massive impact." The company filed an 8-K the same morning disclosing the move, and shares briefly jumped more than 2% before pulling back, still down 13% for the year as of Monday's close.

The financials backing Tenev's confidence are real. Robinhood earned $350 million in profit in Q1 2026, slightly up year-over-year, on $1.07 billion in revenue, a 15% increase. Total assets on the platform have grown to approximately $307 billion. The restructuring itself will cost $20 million in cash severance and $8 million in stock-based compensation, both to be booked in Q2 2026. The company is also closing a small number of open roles it had yet to fill.

What makes the timing notable isn't just the strong numbers; it's where Robinhood's growth is actually coming from. Crypto trading revenue has slowed, but the company has more than offset that with options trading, interest income, a credit card, and, most importantly, prediction markets. Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani projects Robinhood's prediction-market revenue will jump 286% year-over-year in 2026, from $150 million to $586 million, driven largely by the FIFA World Cup. The company co-owns Rothera, a CFTC-licensed prediction exchange built with Susquehanna International Group, which has already cleared around 200 million contracts since its late May debut. Prediction markets, once a niche product, are becoming a serious revenue line, and they're bringing in a class of highly active traders the company's original stock-trading product never captured.

The layoffs arrive in the middle of a broader fintech bloodbath. Tech employers cut 123,653 jobs in the first five months of 2026 - a 66% increase over the same period in 2025, with AI cited as the primary driver for three consecutive months. Coinbase shed 700 positions just last month, equivalent to 14% of its staff, with CEO Brian Armstrong pointing to crypto headwinds and AI's growing role in automating operations.

Robinhood has been here before: in 2022, Tenev cut 9% of the company in April, then returned four months later to cut another 23%, and took personal responsibility for over-hiring during the meme-stock frenzy. This time, the story he's telling is different. The cuts aren't corrective. They're preemptive.

Whether the market believes him depends on what the flatter org chart actually produces. Robinhood's next earnings report will be the first real test of whether removing management layers accelerates product velocity or just cuts costs, and given the prediction-market window tied to the World Cup, the next 60 days are about as high-stakes as the company has ever faced.