Vlad Tenev

Since cofounding Robinhood with Baiju Bhatt in 2013, the shaggy-haired Vlad Tenev has played different roles: the young tech phenom trying to disrupt stodgy incumbents; the villain in the wake of the 2021 GameStop short squeeze scandal; and today, a Wall Street mainstay. Robinhood is well past its teenage years, now a more mature, publicly traded company that keeps pace with its much older competitors like Fidelity and Schwab. But Tenev has even greater ambitions for his company, including injecting crypto directly into its DNA and pioneering the red-hot field of tokenized stocks, or equities launched with a blockchain wrapper. His experimentation and patience have paid off, with Robinhood’s stock soaring over the past year to all-time highs and revenue increasing 50% year over year in the first quarter of 2025. 

Read more: How memestock mania forced CEO Vlad Tenev to reinvent Robinhood—and himself