Robinhood Adds Offering That Allows Retail Investors to Buy into IPOs

On Wednesday, Robinhood, a leading trading platform, announced that it supports Directed Share Programs (DSPs) through IPO Access. According to the blog post, the service allows retail investors to buy shares at the IPO price.

“DSPs are designed to recognize ‘friends’ of the company by giving them an opportunity to buy shares at the IPO price. They can facilitate meaningful community-driven interactions between companies going public and the individuals who have been a part of their journey leading up to the IPO,” the company noted.

The feature looks forward to the company to reserve a portion of IPO shares for a specific group of people, and the platform will distribute these shares to select individuals through the program, Robinhood added. Those who are invited by an issuer to join the DSP at the IPO price can use the Robinhood app to request shares at the IPO price, the company commented.

There were no more details disclosed about the brand-new offering, which is now available on Robinhood.

Robinhood Doubling Its Headcount on Tech Team

The announcement comes in the wake of Robinhood doubling its engineering, compliance, and regulatory teams for the rest of the year. Additionally, Finance Magnates reported that the company has only reached 30% of its engineering hiring goal as of press time. The new hires appointed so far this year, especially during the second quarter of 2021, belong to the technology department, including customer support, as it is considered the biggest expense line of Robinhood nowadays.

Robinhood engineers work from home most of the time. Still, the firm is establishing part of its team in New York City, supervised by Jean Bredeche, Co-Founder of Quantopian, recently acquired by the firm. Moreover, the plans could also be closely related to the recent moves made by Robinhood on the subject of expanding their business.