The shift is visible in one quarter
On October 27, Robinhood reported that revenue from event contracts rose more than sixfold to $173 million. Crypto revenue fell 55% from a year earlier to $120 million.1 A year ago those two lines would have been hard to put in this order. Event contracts are products that pay out depending on whether a specific real-world outcome happens, and they are now a bigger earner for Robinhood than crypto.1
Total revenue rose 12% to a record $1.42 billion. Net income still fell 14% to $476 million. Diluted earnings per share fell 16% to $0.51, against $0.55 that analysts had expected.1 By our arithmetic, event contracts were roughly 12% of the quarter's revenue ($173 million of $1.42 billion). That is a calculation by Via News, not a figure the company reported.
The backbone: what Robinhood's filings show
The figures below come from SEC filings and have been checked against them. Revenue was $1.865 billion in fiscal 2023, $2.951 billion in 2024 and $4.473 billion in 2025.2 By our calculation, that is growth of about 58% and then about 52%. In 2025 the company sold roughly 2.4 times what it sold two years earlier. These are Robinhood's own year-on-year comparisons, since the filings give us no outside yardstick to picture them against.
Profit moved even more sharply. Robinhood lost $541 million in 2023, or $0.61 per share. It earned $1.411 billion in 2024 ($1.56 per share) and $1.883 billion in 2025 ($2.05 per share).2 That works out to about 42 cents of profit per dollar of 2025 revenue, a calculation of ours. It also means this quarter's 14% profit decline came from a very high base.
Cash flow was less smooth than profit. Operating cash flow, the cash the business actually generated from its operations, was $1.181 billion in 2023, negative $157 million in 2024 and $1.638 billion in 2025.2 In 2024 the company reported a $1.411 billion profit but generated negative operating cash. Profit and cash flow can diverge sharply in a brokerage, so it is worth watching both.
The cash balance has moved within a range. It stood at $4.835 billion at the end of 2023, $4.332 billion at the end of 2024 and $4.261 billion at the end of 2025.2 It was $4.162 billion in the second quarter of 2025, then $5.012 billion in the first quarter of 2026 and $5.362 billion in the second quarter of 2026.2 Shareholders' equity rose from $6.696 billion to $7.972 billion between 2023 and 2024.2 Research and development spending stayed steady at $349 million, $323 million and $355 million across 2023 to 2025.2 Revenue nearly 2.4-fold up on flat engineering spending is a lot of operating leverage, which is our reading of the filings.
A small disagreement in the numbers
Two records of Robinhood's cash at September 30, 2025 differ. One says $4.331 billion and the other $4.3 billion, a gap of about $31 million. That is a rounding difference, not a contradiction. We use the SEC-filing figure of $4.331 billion.2
The next product: contracts on company KPIs
On September 30, Cboe announced at Robinhood's HOOD Summit that it plans to launch binary contracts tied to company-specific key performance indicators (KPIs). The products cover 23 companies and are expected in October 2026, subject to regulatory approval. Robinhood would be the first retail broker to offer them.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
Two cautions apply. This is a company announcement, so it reads as promotion. Our measured reliability check found that 53% of 6,464 claims from this source held up, so treat details as plans and not outcomes.3 Our entity records also list ForecastEx as a supplier to Robinhood, so it is one of the businesses that depends on this product line growing.3
Why the timing matters: markets that never close
Nasdaq says the industry's move to a 23-hour trading day is expected on Sunday, December 6, 2026. That depends on readiness of the systems that distribute market prices and on SEC rule changes. Subject to SEC approval, Nasdaq would add a session from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern.4 Separately, the CFTC announced a December 15 industry roundtable on whether derivatives markets could move to 24/7 trading.5
Our reading is that an event contract that settles on news at any hour fits a market that stays open. That is an inference, not something the sources state. The Brazilian election shows the appeal and the risk. After the October 25 runoff, Bolsonaro lost even though prediction markets had expected him to win. Brazilian firms bought stablecoins to hedge currency risk, with USDT volume on Mercado Bitcoin up nearly 800% and Bitcoin volume up 865%.6 A forecast market that got the headline outcome wrong is a useful reminder that these prices are not guarantees.
Regulators are pulling in two directions
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.7 The outcome will help decide whether event contracts can be offered nationally under one federal regime. For a company now earning $173 million a quarter from them, that is a material question.
Elsewhere, Coinbase set a deadline tied to Europe's MiCA stablecoin rules. It said it would automatically convert non-compliant stablecoins, including USDT and PayPal's, to USDC, and told users not to deposit them after October 30.8 Treasury Secretary Bessent said stablecoins could reinforce dollar dominance and that Treasury could coordinate with the SEC and CFTC on crypto rules.9
AI agents as customers, and why trust is the bottleneck
If software agents start to trade and pay, someone has to verify them. Baselayer, which helps financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, raised $35 million to extend its identity technology to AI agents. M13 led the Series A, with participation from Picus Capital.10 Jonathan Awad put the problem this way: “Agents spin up and they spin down. How can you trust this random one-task agent?”10 He also warned that without proof they act for legitimate people or businesses, “agents will just get blocked everywhere.”10 He said relationships with financial institutions typically take 12 to 18 months to establish, and large merchant partnerships up to 24 months.10 That is a long runway before revenue arrives.
Investor Sean Jacobsohn of Norwest offers a caution for the whole theme: “You don't want AI doing calculations because it is not good at math.”11 That matters if agents are going to handle money. These two quotes come from Crunchbase News interviews, a source where 49% of 41 checked claims held up. They are opinions from interested parties, not measurements.10,11
What to watch
- Approval of the KPI contracts. They were expected in October subject to regulatory approval, and the dossier does not confirm a launch.3
- Whether event-contract revenue holds above crypto. One quarter shows a crossover, not a trend.1
- December 6 and December 15. Nasdaq's longer day depends on SEC rule changes, and the CFTC's 24/7 roundtable follows nine days later.4,5
- The Utah case and the nine other state actions. They bear directly on where event contracts can legally be sold.7
One limit applies to everything above. The dossier has full checked financials for Robinhood only. It has none for Cboe, Nasdaq, Coinbase or Baselayer, so we make no claims about their numbers.