Robinhood’s biggest competitor Public.com reveals global expansion plans

It’s not been the best year for retail investors, but the competitive fintech market to win them over as customers is continuing to heat up.

Public.com, an investing app backed by Tiger Global among other high profile investors, is one such firm plotting growth and is planning to expand outside the US next year in2023.

The company, valued at $1.2bn according to its latest funding round, was reportedly recently looking to buy a Amsterdam-based Bux, another stock trading app.

While news of the Bux deal appears to have gone quiet, Public has opened its waitlist for non-US investors with a 2023 launched now planned. 

Next year the company has confirmed it is planning to open up its US platform to non-US investors as well as looking at full country launches in both Europe and elsewhere. 

The move follows rival Robinhood’s plans to reboot its global expansion, following an aborted UK launch in 2020, with the acquisition of consumer crypto platform Ziglu. That deal, it was recently revealed exclusively by AltFi was being held up by Robinhood re-negotiating the price it was willing to pay for Ziglu in the face of a plunging crypto market. 

Public, while firmed focused on the US market since its launch in 2017, has European roots. Its two co-founders - and co-CEOs - Jannick Malling and Leif Abraham are from Denmark and Germany, respectively.  In December 2020 it raised $65m in a Series C funding round just before the GameStop squeezed accelerated the boom in retail investors using apps to trade stocks.  

The period prompted Public to remove the controversial Payment For Order Flow model as well as add ‘safety labels’ to certain stocks. 

Nonetheless, it prompted a 20-fold explosion in customer signups and had clocked up one million customers by February 2021. 

Not long after the company raised $220m in Series D funding from Tiger Global and other existing investors and its valuation move up to $1.2bn.

Its investors include Tiger Global, as well as early backers Accel and Greycroft, Lakestar, Tony Hawk, The Chainsmokers, Dick Parsons, Will Smith, Morgan DeBaun, JJ Watt, Advancit Capital, Sophia Amoruso, Casey Neistat and Scott Belsky, have also backed the company in certain rounds. 

The company operates a ‘social model’ of investing whereby users can connect with other investors to share ideas and trades. Initially focused on single US stocks only, the company has expanded into ETFs, crypto and alternative assets in the past year.

“We’ve built an investment platform in the US that allows people from a wide set of incomes and backgrounds to invest in multiple different types of assets,” Dann Bibas GM International told AltFi.

“What we’ve built in the US has applications to help customers all over the world,” he added.