INTELLIGENCE · PERSON DOSSIER
UPDATED 2026-08-13Vlad Tenev
Founders & CEOs
Robinhood · United States
Net worth
$5.7bn
Robinhood shareholding
49,234,651 Class B shares — 26.1% of total voting power
Founder voting control
Founders hold ~12% of shares but over 50% of voting power
Salary
$34,248 a year
Total 2025 compensation
$3,004,978
Identity & Ownership
Current role
Chair of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President, Robinhood Markets, Inc.
Robinhood's 2026 annual report describes him as "our CEO, President and Chair of our board of directors". He has been a director since 2013 and has led the company as sole chief executive since November 2020.
Full name
Vladimir Tenev
Filed with the SEC as Vladimir Tenev; publicly known as Vlad Tenev. Signed his 2021 congressional testimony as "Testimony of Vladimir Tenev".
Born
13 February 1987
Born in Varna, Bulgaria. Forbes carries the same date of birth on its billionaires listing.
Age
39
Listed as 39 in Robinhood's 2026 proxy statement, filed 22 April 2026.
Nationality
American; born in Bulgaria
Forbes records his citizenship as the United States. He told Congress: "I was born in Bulgaria... I immigrated with my family to America for a better life when I was five years old."
Based
Palo Alto, California
Forbes lists Palo Alto, California as his residence. Robinhood's registered head office is at 85 Willow Road, Menlo Park, California.
Company listing
Robinhood Markets, Inc. — NASDAQ: HOOD
Class A common stock, $0.0001 par value, listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker HOOD. Delaware-incorporated, commission file number 001-40691.
Public account
@vladtenev on X
Robinhood's own quarterly results releases direct investors to Tenev's X account as an official live-stream channel for earnings calls.
Marital status
Married to Celina Tenev; three children
Celina Tenev co-founded Call9, an emergency health service. Tenev has said his wife coined the Robinhood name while the app was in development.
Personal Wealth & Holdings
Net worth
$5.7bn
Forbes real-time billionaires estimate, ranking him 279th in the world, with the source of wealth given as "stock trading app". Net worth figures are Forbes estimates, not audited disclosures.
Robinhood shareholding
49,234,651 Class B shares — 26.1% of total voting power
Beneficial ownership as at 8 April 2026, per Robinhood's proxy statement. That holding represents 44.9% of all Class B shares outstanding. Class B carries ten votes per share; Class A carries one.
Founder voting control
Founders hold ~12% of shares but over 50% of voting power
Robinhood's 2026 annual report states that as at 31 December 2025 the founders and their related entities held approximately 12% of outstanding common stock and over 50% of the voting power. Tenev and Baiju Bhatt hold all outstanding Class B stock and are bound by a Founders' Voting Agreement dated 26 July 2021.
Salary
$34,248 a year
Robinhood's proxy statement records the same base salary for 2023, 2024 and 2025. The committee noted "no change to CEO compensation" in 2025: he received no annual cash incentive and no new equity grants.
Total 2025 compensation
$3,004,978
Made up of the $34,248 salary plus $2,970,730 of other compensation: $1,722,904 of personal security services, including residential security and online privacy services, and $1,247,826 of personal use of private aircraft.
2021 Founders Award
Cancelled in 2023; $485m accounting charge
Market-based restricted stock units granted to the founders around the 2021 IPO were cancelled, producing a $485m share-based compensation charge that Robinhood labels the "2021 Founders Award Cancellation".
Giving
$125,000 to the TJ Partnership Fund (2025)
Reported as the largest donation in the history of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, his alma mater.
Background
BS, Mathematics, Stanford University
Where he met Baiju Bhatt, who became his co-founder in every venture that followed.
MS, Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles (2008)
He enrolled intending to take a mathematics PhD and pursue academia, and left the programme to work with Bhatt. He returned as keynote speaker at UCLA's 2019 mathematics commencement.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Fairfax County, Virginia
A selective public magnet school for science and technology.
Both parents worked at the World Bank
From his written testimony: "My parents, both of whom worked at the World Bank, instilled in me at an early age the values of financial responsibility and opportunity for all."
Celeris (2010) and Chronos Research (2011)
Two high-frequency and low-latency trading software businesses built with Bhatt before Robinhood. Chronos sold low-latency software to trading firms and banks; the pair moved from New York to California in 2011.
Shared the chief executive title with Baiju Bhatt until November 2020
Robinhood ran a co-CEO structure from its founding. Tenev became sole chief executive in November 2020, two months before the GameStop episode.
Witness before the House Financial Services Committee, 18 February 2021
Appeared at the virtual hearing "Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide", chaired by Maxine Waters, Serial No. 117-3. His 13-page written statement remains the fullest first-person account of Robinhood's January 2021 decisions.
Named in requests, subpoenas and a search warrant; investigation closed with no action
Robinhood disclosed that in connection with the early 2021 trading restrictions, "we and our employees, including our CEO, Vladimir Tenev, have received requests for information, and in some cases, subpoenas and requests for testimony" from the US Attorney's Office, the DOJ Antitrust Division, SEC staff, FINRA, the New York Attorney General and state securities regulators, and that "a related search warrant was executed by the USAO to obtain Mr. Tenev's cell phone". On 10 January 2025 SEC Enforcement advised the company in writing that it had closed the investigation.
UCLA mathematics commencement keynote (2019); TEDAI; All-In Summit; Fortune Brainstorm Tech; TechCrunch Disrupt
A regular on the technology and finance conference circuit, most often on retail investing, artificial intelligence and tokenisation.
Played by Sebastian Stan in Dumb Money (2023)
The feature film dramatising the GameStop short squeeze.
Forbes 30 Under 30 (2016); 30 Under 30 Hall of Fame (2022); Forbes 400 (2025); Fortune 100 Most Powerful People in Business (2025)
List placements only; these are third-party editorial selections rather than awards with published criteria.
Notable Coverage
21 items
Robinhood reports record quarterly revenue of $1.31bn as event contracts revenue rises more than tenfold
Tenev said: "Whether it's the Robinhood Chain, Robinhood Ventures, or Trump Accounts, our product velocity is focused on one goal: making everyone an owner. Broad ownership is essential to a free, stable, and prosperous society."
Trump Accounts reach seven million sign-ups in under a month
Robinhood raises $2.2bn in zero-coupon convertible notes
Robinhood cuts about 10% of its workforce
Robinhood said it was acting "from a position of business strength", citing June month-to-date average daily trading volumes at record levels across equities, options and prediction markets.
Robinhood unveils the Robinhood Chain public mainnet and Stock Tokens in London
Robinhood launches Agentic Trading, putting AI agents on the retail trading platform
Robinhood buys TradePMR and Bitstamp, pushing into advisers and institutional crypto
FINRA orders $26m in fines and $3.75m in restitution across the Robinhood broker-dealers
Robinhood paid a $26m penalty and about $3.76m in restitution plus interest and agreed to certain undertakings. It had narrowed the scope of its social media influencer and affiliate publisher programmes after updated FINRA guidance in February 2023.
Two Robinhood broker-dealers pay $45m over more than ten securities law provisions
Both firms admitted the findings concerning their off-channel communications failures and agreed to certain undertakings.
SEC closes its investigation into the January 2021 trading restrictions with no action
Robinhood disclosed the closure in its annual report. No enforcement action was brought against Tenev personally in connection with the restrictions.
Robinhood enters prediction markets with US presidential election contracts
Robinhood suspended the pro football contracts at the CFTC's request and continued to offer other event contracts. It has since built Rothera, a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, through a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group.
Robinhood Crypto receives an SEC Wells notice
On 21 February 2025 the SEC's Division of Enforcement closed the investigation, advising Robinhood Crypto in writing that it did not intend to move forward with recommending an enforcement action.
Robinhood settles with the Massachusetts Securities Division for $7.5m
Robinhood disclosed the settlement in its annual report. Tenev had told Congress in 2021 that he was not aware of any agreed definition of "gamification" and that Robinhood "does not offer rewards or levels to encourage more trading".
House committee staff report finds Robinhood had "troubling business practices" and inadequate risk management
Tenev's evidence to the committee was that the restrictions were imposed solely to meet clearinghouse deposit requirements and that "any allegation that Robinhood acted to help hedge funds or other special interests to the detriment of our customers is absolutely false and market-distorting rhetoric".
Robinhood floats on Nasdaq at $38 a share
FINRA orders Robinhood Financial to pay $57m in fines and about $12.6m in restitution
Robinhood settled on a no-admit, no-deny basis and said it continued to cooperate with FINRA on the outstanding matters. Tenev had told Congress five months earlier that the firm had hired a dedicated options education specialist, added in-app safeguards and tightened eligibility for certain options strategies.
Tenev testifies to the House Financial Services Committee and apologises to customers
In his oral statement he said: "Despite the unprecedented market conditions in January, at the end of the day, what happened is unacceptable to us. To our customers, I'm sorry, and I apologize." Under questioning he added: "I am not going to say that Robinhood did everything perfect and that we haven't made mistakes in the past."
Tenev makes real-time settlement his central policy ask after the GameStop episode
Robinhood raises about $3.4bn in emergency capital in roughly four days
Robinhood restricts buying in GameStop and other securities after a $3bn clearinghouse demand
Tenev's written testimony states the restrictions were imposed "to facilitate compliance with clearinghouse deposit requirements" and that "the action we took was for one reason and one reason only: to allow us to continue to meet our regulatory deposit requirements". He noted a number of other brokerages imposed similar restrictions.
SEC fines Robinhood Financial $65m over payment-for-order-flow disclosures and best execution
Robinhood settled without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, agreeing to a cease-and-desist order, a censure and the $65m civil penalty. Tenev later told Congress that Robinhood's PFOF relationships are with market makers rather than hedge funds, that it negotiated the same rebate rate with every market maker, and that customers received more than $1bn in price improvement in the first half of 2020.