Trading app Robinhood’s technology and development spend is up 248% year over year to $156 million or 28% of total net revenues, the company reported during Wednesday’s earnings call.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based Robinhood also reported record total net revenues of $565 million in Q2, up 131% year over year. A chunk of that was from cryptocurrency revenues, increased from $5 million last year to $233 million this year. Dodgecoin, the token developed as a joke, made up 62% of that trading volume.
Much of Robinhood’s tech spend in Q2 was due to the company’s effort to improve scale and stability, said Vlad Tenev, chief executive officer and co-founder. Last year, the company made headlines for a widespread customer outage.
“Number one, stability and scale have been the highest priority for our engineering team for well over a year. We’ve continued to double down here,” Tenev said. “We’ve added engineering talent and filled important senior leadership roles and we’re methodically working to eliminate single points of failure, upgrade our systems and enhance the redundancy and resiliency of our services.”
Tenev specifically cited progress in making crypto services more resilient to surges in trading volume.
The company also added cloud resources, said Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick.
“Following high trading activity on our platform earlier this year and ahead of our IPO, we decided to procure additional cloud resources to help ensure stability, particularly through June and July,” Warnick said. “Additionally, as we continue to invest in our development capabilities, we’ve been aggressively hiring technology-related headcount, but over time we expect to see this line item decrease as a percentage of revenue.”
One tech initiative specifically cited was using technology to address losses from debit card chargebacks and reversed deposit transactions, which totaled $40 million during Q2 and building out its platform.
The market responded poorly to the earnings call after Robinhood executives warned the revenue surge might not last might not last beyond Q2. Stock prices declined 8.2% to $45.70 in extended trading at 6:35 p.m. in New York, Bloomberg-Mercury reported. Today, stocks were up slightly, trading at $45.74 as of 10:07 a.m., but still down 8.15%.
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