Robinhood CEO's Shocking Prediction On Stocks, The AI Bubble, & Gambling Controversy | Vlad Tenev

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
There is so much NFL on ESPN right now.
Monday Night Football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week.

**Jack Selby** (0:14)
Unbelievable.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:16)
And now, NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on, all season long, on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:30)
Gen Z, a new report shows that generation is leaning on their parents for more financial help.

**Vlad Tenev** (0:36)
Can we actually make broad ownership a reality? A future with relatively few owners is inherently fragile. We're building a financial super app.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:46)
Are you setting them up in a situation where the odds are stacked against them to actually make money?

**Vlad Tenev** (0:52)
A lot of people criticize us because they think we incentivize active trading and prediction markets. That's when you can kind of get into trouble.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:59)
Get this, the richest 1% controls more wealth now than at any time in more than a half century.

**Vlad Tenev** (1:05)
Alarm bells have started ringing. There's a small circle of wealthy insiders that's benefiting from all the growth.

**Graham Stephan** (1:12)
How much has AI changed the game?

**Vlad Tenev** (1:14)
Humans overseeing agents, seeing how many you can actually employ, including when you're sleeping.

**Graham Stephan** (1:20)
So do you think that with Robinhood, eventually you could have just a few people running the entire company?

**Vlad Tenev** (1:25)
Um, it's- That's just dang good.

**Graham Stephan** (1:28)
That's the carrot, huh?

**Graham Stephan** (1:33)
Vlad from Robinhood, thank you so much for coming on The Iced Coffee Hour.

**Vlad Tenev** (1:36)
Great to see you guys again.

**Graham Stephan** (1:37)
Last time you sat here, you still drove a used car. Since then, your app Robinhood has grown $125 billion with a B dollars in assets under custody, which is 50% in one year. Today, Robinhood stock is up 3%, which some people are like, oh, 3%, whatever, whatever, whatever. Maybe I'm up $3,000.
You're up $150 million or whatever, just in one day. I have to know, are you still driving a used car?

**Vlad Tenev** (2:06)
I can afford a new car now. No, yeah, I had a used 911 Turbo S last year. It was kind of a holdover because I had ordered a new GT3, which is a very fun car.
And so now I drive that. So I have a GT3 touring, manual transmission, the thing cooks.

**Graham Stephan** (2:30)
Do you have a long commute?

**Vlad Tenev** (2:32)
No, not too long. I mean, much shorter now that I got this new car.
Yeah, anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes depending on traffic.

**Graham Stephan** (2:41)
Now, when you walk into Porsche, do they just give you any car that you want or do you have to kind of play the game a little bit to work your way up?

**Vlad Tenev** (2:47)
A lot of brands reward loyalty. So if you're loyal to a particular car maker or a dealership, they take care of you. And not a lot of them just, I mean, some do this differently, but I think for a lot of them, they do actually value loyal customers relative to just a random famous person reaching out to them who wants something. So to answer your question, I don't think it has helped me very much. I kind of had to wait over a year just like everyone else.

**Graham Stephan** (3:24)
So as the CEO and founder of Robinhood, if not the stock price, what is the metric that you obsess over every day?

**Vlad Tenev** (3:31)
I don't think there's one metric really, because I mean, Robinhood works on many things. We have lots of businesses. Increasingly, my job is kind of, I have folks that effectively function as CEOs of their businesses reporting to me. And if I had to think about what idea or what concept is associated most with Robinhood, what we can own, it's really ownership.
This idea of a world or a future with relatively few owners is inherently fragile. And can we actually make broad ownership a reality? Can we make it so that more people own equities and also all the other assets around us? So one thing that I have been talking about recently is percentage of households in America that own equities. So right now, that's something like 65%. Before Robinhood came along, it was in the low 50s. I think we meaningfully contributed. And now the question is, can we get to 95% plus? Which I think with initiatives like the Trump accounts, with our work on private markets, it makes that increasingly likely.