The money behind the shift
Robinhood reported third-quarter results on October 27 in which one business shrank and another grew sixfold. Crypto revenue fell 55% year on year to $120M. Event-contract revenue rose more than sixfold to $173M. Total revenue rose 12% to a record $1.42B, but net income fell 14% to $476M and diluted earnings per share fell 16% to $0.51.1 By our arithmetic, event contracts were about 12% of that quarter's revenue, which is more than crypto's $120M. That is how fast the product has become material for a company most people know as a stock-trading app.
Event contracts are binary bets on outcomes. The contract pays out if something happens and nothing if it does not. They are one strand of a wider story: markets that never close, new products for ordinary investors, and software agents that handle money.
What Robinhood's audited numbers show
The quarter sits on a company that changed a great deal in three years. Every figure in this section comes from SEC filings and was checked by Via News's verified-data process.
Revenue was $1.865B in fiscal 2023, $2.951B in 2024 and $4.473B in 2025.2 That is about 2.4 times the 2023 level, by our calculation. Profit followed. Net income was a loss of $541M in 2023, then a profit of $1.411B in 2024 and $1.883B in 2025. Earnings per share went from -$0.61 to $1.56 to $2.05.2
Cash generation was less even. Operating cash flow was $1.181B in 2023 and negative $157M in 2024, then recovered to $1.638B in 2025.2 A company can report record profit in a year when its operations consume cash. The 2024 figures show that, which is why we read profit and cash flow together.
Spending on research and development was steady, at $349M, $323M and $355M across the three years.2 Revenue more than doubled over the same period, so this cost grew far more slowly than the business. Stockholders' equity, the cushion of shareholder-owned value, rose from $6.696B in 2023 to $7.972B in 2024.2
The cash pile moved around
Robinhood's cash was $5.829B in the second quarter of 2023 and $4.835B at the end of fiscal 2023. It fell to $4.332B at the end of 2024 and $4.261B at the end of 2025.2 It then climbed again, to $5.012B in the first quarter of 2026 and $5.362B in the second.2 Cash trended down for two and a half years and has risen over the last two quarters of these filings. The figures do not say why.
One seam is worth showing. For September 30, 2025, our records hold two cash values: $4.331B from the filing-based record and a rounded $4.3B. The gap of roughly $31M is rounding, not a disagreement about the business. We use the filing-based figure.2
The next products: KPI contracts and longer trading hours
On September 30, Cboe Global Markets said at Robinhood's HOOD Summit in Houston that it plans to launch binary contracts tied to company-specific key performance indicators, expected in October 2026 and subject to regulatory approval. Robinhood is to be the first retail broker to offer them.3 The announcement's headline says the products are tied to 23 companies.3 Cboe's Steve Quirk said: "Earnings contracts give retail investors another tool to inform their strategies and offer an even more precise way to trade on anticipated company KPIs."3
Reliability matters here. Our measurement of this press-release source found that 53% of 6,322 checked claims held up.3 It is a company announcement, so treat the plans as intentions until a launch is confirmed.
Trading hours are also set to change. Nasdaq says the industry's move to a 23-hour trading day is expected on Sunday, December 6, 2026, pending readiness of the data feeds that publish prices and SEC rule changes. Subject to SEC approval, Nasdaq will add a 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. ET session.4 The CFTC has said it will host an industry roundtable on December 15 on whether derivatives markets could move to 24/7 trading.4
Regulators are not all pulling the same way
On October 27 the CFTC sued Utah to block state efforts to shut down CFTC-registered contract markets using state laws. It said it has started legal proceedings against nine other states.4 For anyone holding Robinhood, this matters because event contracts are now a visible slice of its revenue, and whether federal or state rules govern them is unsettled. We cannot say from this evidence how the suits will end.
Elsewhere, Coinbase set a three-day MiCA deadline, converting non-compliant stablecoins to USDC automatically and telling users not to deposit them after October 30.4 Treasury Secretary Bessent said stablecoins and digital assets could reinforce dollar dominance and that Treasury could coordinate with the SEC and CFTC on crypto rules.4
AI agents: funding is arriving, and so are warnings
Baselayer, which helps financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, raised $35M in a Series A led by M13, with Picus Capital also participating, to extend its identity technology to AI agents.5 Founder Jonathan Awad framed the problem: "Agents spin up and they spin down. How can you trust this random one-task agent?"5 He warned that without proof of acting for legitimate people or businesses, "agents will just get blocked everywhere."5 He also said relationships with financial institutions typically take 12 to 18 months to establish, and large merchant partnerships up to 24 months.5 That matters for investors judging how fast this infrastructure can earn revenue.
Investor Sean Jacobsohn of Norwest sounded a caution: "You don't want AI doing calculations because it is not good at math." He said that when precision is needed, "you can't rely on AI for that."6
Both articles come from Crunchbase News, where our measurement found 49% of 41 checked claims held up. That is a small sample, so we treat these as statements by named people, not as established facts.5,6
What to watch
- Whether Cboe's KPI contracts launch as planned and whether event-contract revenue keeps growing from $173M.1,3
- The CFTC's December 15 roundtable and the state lawsuits.4
- Nasdaq's December 6 target, which depends on SEC approval and data-feed readiness.4
- Robinhood's cash, which rose over the last two quarters in the filings, and whether profit growth resumes after Q3's 14% decline.1,2