Fintech keeps minting billionaires as Robinhood co-founders prepare for massive IPO
Already this year, Coinbase's co-founders have joined the billionaire ranks, along with the founders of Affirm and Marqeta. For years, Silicon Valley has been taking on the banking incumbents with promises of a better customer experience, but it's only now that emerging trading apps, payment upstarts and online lenders are achieving big public market valuations.
Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, who were roommates at Stanford almost a decade ago, are each poised to be worth about $2.6 billion on paper when their trading app debuts on the Nasdaq later this month. That's based on the $40-pershare midpoint of the company's price range given in its updated IPO prospectus on Monday.
CEO Tenev and chief creative officer Bhatt will each own 7.9% of the company's outstanding shares, according to the filing. They're also each selling about $50 million worth of shares in the offering.
It's been a banner year for tech listings, with at least 12 companies that went public through an IPO, direct listing or special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) attaining a market capitalization of $10 billion or more. Between those companies and a few others with lower valuations, the tech industry has minted 16 billionaires in 2021.
