Robinhood, an online and mobile app brokerage and trading platform, has announced that it raised $280 million in a recent round of fundraising that valued the fintech at $8.3 billion, according to the company’s blog.

Reports of Robinhood’s latest Series F fundraising round began emerging in April, after the investment platform struggled with three separate outages during two weeks of volatility related to the Covid-19 outbreak in March. According to the firm’s reports, it has exceeded the $250 million goal at an $8 billion valuation that it had established for the raise, and the round was led by Sequoia Capital.

Robinhood reports that it actually benefitted during the volatility from a wave of new signups from opportunistic investors, opening 3 million new accounts yeat-to-date.

The new funding will be used to open a new office in Denver, expand staffing, develop new products and upgrade the existing platform – in part to avoid future outages, according to the Robinhood blog.

Robinhood launched as a pioneer in low-cost trading, charging no commissions or fees. Today, major incumbent brokerages like Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard have moved to match Robinhood’s low-cost offering. In recent months, the company has rolled out new features including enhanced cash management offerings, fractional share stock trading and dividend reinvestment programs.

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