Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev discusses growth of the company’s prediction markets and the firm’s involvement in Trump Accounts for children. He speaks with Bloomberg's Tim Stenovec and Isabelle Lee.
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What Vladimir Tenev said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Vladimir Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, discussed the rapid growth of prediction markets, noting the business generated $415 million in annualized revenue in Q1 2026, approaching crypto's $536 million pace. He said sports contracts dominate but non-sports are gaining share and may eventually overtake sports. Tenev announced the joint venture with Susquehanna to launch Rother, an integrated exchange and clearing system, going live later this quarter, with LedgerX as the underlying infrastructure. He said Kalshi and ForecastEx would remain alternative exchange providers. On Trump accounts, Robinhood is the sole initial trustee and broker, partnering with BNY, with a $100 million development cost on a cost-plus basis, and a July 4th launch target. He declined to speculate on Coinbase's layoffs.
Key takeaways
Prediction markets generated $415 million annualized revenue in Q1 2026, nearing crypto's $536 million pace.
Rother, a joint venture with Susquehanna, will launch later this quarter with integrated exchange and clearing.
Robinhood is the sole initial trustee and broker for Trump accounts, with a $100 million development cost.
Trump accounts will support rollovers to other brokerages, but no firm date yet.
1:33How much of that is sports related on Robinhood?
2:46So, is Robinhood, you're partnering right now on infrastructure, but is the goal for Robinhood to have its own integrated prediction market exchange and clearing system?
3:28So, what role would Kalshi play in Robinhood's ecosystem once you fully launch that one?
3:51Any names in your list other than Kalshi that you're looking to tap?
4:25... who say, 'Well, maybe we understand prediction markets and event-based contracts on the economy and certain other parts, maybe oil prices, but what we don't see sports fitting into financial services.' What would you say to those critics?
6:41What exactly is Robinhood doing versus BNY versus Treasury to administer Trump accounts?
7:48Would parents be able to roll over those funds to another brokerage?
8:11Can you explain how the benefits outweigh the cost of this?
9:15What does that say to you about the industry right now?
Robinhood reported earnings recently. It showed that its revenue from its crypto segment falling, but some of that is shifting to its prediction markets business. The platform saying that the annualized revenue from its event contracts were about $415 million in the first quarter compared to crypto's implied $536 million pace. Vlad Tenev is here. He's chairman and CEO of Robinhood and he joins us now on set. Vlad, always good to see you. Prediction markets revenues as I mentioned now bigger than that from stock trading. The business did not exist just a few quarters ago. When does it overtake crypto revenues?
And that's a good point. It's a very new business for us. It's new as an asset class. Prediction markets really entered the mainstream in the 2024 election, which is when we launched our offering. And I think we're just at the beginnings of this new asset class.
Well, I don't really think about it that way. So, Robinhood is a financial super app. We're striving to serve all of our customers' financial needs across every asset class and every financial transaction worldwide. So, I think there's plenty more room to run, but there's also plenty of room to run in our other business lines. We have 11 lines of business generating 100 million in revenue or more per year with plenty more on deck.
Well, and we're going to get to more on crypto, but I do want to stick with prediction markets for a second because it's kind of like what everybody is talking about right now. It's a big part of our, in fact, it's a big part of Bloomberg Crypto now. How much is sports related on the platform? Because our Bloomberg Intelligence team does an analysis of Kalshi, for example. They say 80 to 90% roughly of the activity on Kalshi is sports related. How much of that is sports related on Robinhood?
Yeah, it's a big chunk of it for sure, but we are seeing non-sports contracts continuing to gain share. Sports is just easily understandable, right? You're seeing prediction markets being a disruptor and an alternative to traditional sports books and there's already an established behavior there whereas general event trading is a little bit newer. It's harder for some customers to wrap their heads around. We do a lot to educate customers on that, but we see it growing and in fact as the product matures, we see a world where actually non-sports eventually overtake sports.
I'm still going to stick with prediction markets. It's just too interesting. So, is Robinhood, you're partnering right now on infrastructure, but is the goal for Robinhood to have its own integrated prediction market exchange and clearing system?
We did announce a joint venture with Susquehanna which is one of the leading market makers to launch Rother. So we acquired LedgerX if you're familiar, which is a long established futures DCM and DCO and that actually is going to go live this quarter. So, for a while we've been partnering with third parties to provide the exchange and clearing infrastructure, but now we have a vertically integrated stack later this quarter.
They would be an alternative exchange provider along with ForecastEx and who knows, we might also integrate with more exchanges. Really what we're looking for is how do we give customers choice and flexibility and give them the best pricing and the best access to contract selection.
I mean, I think we've had conversations with all of the players. And I should also say on the Rother side, a lot of people are interested in coming to Rother as well because they know Robinhood brings a lot of distribution, a lot of usage. So we've been hearing from folks that want to integrate with Rother at launch and they see the combination of Robinhood and SIG as a very, very strong one to bring liquidity into the market.
You know, I've spoken quite a bit about prediction markets with other CEOs. Rick Wurster of Schwab, for example, they don't offer prediction markets right now. And he's told me that when and if they do offer, they don't want to offer sports because he sees that as gambling and he doesn't see that as being aligned with his own financial services and what he's doing at his firm. What would you say to critics who say, 'Well, maybe we understand prediction markets and event-based contracts on the economy and certain other parts, maybe oil prices, but what we don't see sports fitting into financial services.' What would you say to those critics?
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