Weekly Wisdom | The Robinhood Tandem

Weekly Wisdom

Sep 26

The Robinhood Tandem

Robinhood Markets, the popular financial services company loved by millennials, seems unstoppable. And the credit for its rise over the past decade belongs to its two co-founders, Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev. These young math whizzes have profoundly shaped the fintech landscape and continue to contribute meaningfully to America’s future.

Let’s discover more:

Bhatt and Tenev were both classmates and roommates at Stanford, where they studied physics and mathematics. They later moved to NYC and founded Robinhood Markets in 2013.
In 12 years, Robinhood Markets has grown to a market capitalization exceeding $90 billion while remaining one of the leaders in the fintech industry. In the coming years, Robinhood Markets could become a dominant global financial institution like JP Morgan.
After stepping down as co-CEO from Robinhood Markets in 2020, Bhatt founded Aetherflux, a space-based solar energy company, in 2023, which will beam energy from space to remote places on Earth. Aetherflux recently raised $50 million in April to test their technology in 2026.
Also in 2023, Tenev co-founded Harmonic AI, an AI startup aimed at creating mathematical superintelligence. Unlike ChatGPT and other large language models, their AI model, named Aristotle, is trained to solve the most complex mathematical problems. After raising $100 million recently, Harmonic AI hopes to release Aristotle to the general public by the end of this year.
Tenev attended the Invest America Roundtable at the White House on June 9th in support of the so-called Trump Accounts, which provide $1,000 in a government-funded index fund account to every child born after January 1st, 2025. Tenev has also publicly supported both the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, two critical pieces of crypto legislation.

If Bhatt’s Aetherflux is successful, it could aid the U.S. military, charitable organizations, and many regions of the world that lack adequate infrastructure in deploying energy. If Tenev’s Harmonic AI’s Aristotle model comes close to superintelligence, then the likelihood of major scientific breakthroughs in mathematical fields will increase. What isn’t in doubt is that Bhatt and Tenev will continue to be among the greatest startup founders of their generation.