By Sergei Klebnikov, Eliza Haverstock and Antoine Gara
Robinhood cofounders Baiju Bhatt (left) and Vladimir Tenev (pictured in 2015) met as physics students at Stanford.
KITTU KOLLURI
Robinhood, the mobile app that pioneered commission-free stock trades, filed for its hotly anticipated initial public offering on Thursday afternoon, divulging $959 million in revenue for 2020 as retail trading boomed—up 245% from 2019.
The S-1 filing also disclosed an incentive-laden restricted stock award plan that could earn cofounders Vlad Tenev, 34, and Baiju Bhatt, 36, billions of dollars in coming years. In late May, Robinhood’s board approved awards of 22,200,000 and 13,320,000 restricted stock awards to Tenev and Bhatt, respectively, which will vest over eight years after its IPO depending on how the company’s stock performs.
If Tenev and Bhatt achieve each of the price-based stock milestones, which range from Robinhood reaching $120 a share to $300 a share, the…