💲Robinhood Banks $1.5B. Monzo Packs Its Bags and Leaves the U.S. Public Unleashes the AI Bots.

BREAKING: Elon Musk just posted that Robinhood will be the ONLY brokerage allowed to distribute SpaceX shares. Also he's making Vlad Tenev the Mars mission commander. These reports are false. Happy April 1st.

Elon Musk posted four words on X and reversed a few stocks. "These reports are false" — and just like that, the narrative flipped on what could be the biggest IPO in history. That's the kind of Wednesday we're having in fintech. Robinhood survived the SpaceX scare AND dropped a banking milestone in the same afternoon, Monzo quietly texted America "it's not you, it's me" and bounced, and Public just launched AI agents that actually trade your portfolio for you. Let's run it.

Robinhood (HOOD) CEO Vlad Tenev posted on X this morning that Robinhood Banking has crossed $1.5 billion in deposits from nearly 100,000 funded customers — and deposits are up roughly 50% in the past three weeks alone. The product launched in November 2025. That's a steep climb for a banking product that didn't exist five months ago.

Robinhood, founded in 2013 and headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, has spent the last two years aggressively expanding beyond its commission-free trading roots. Banking services are provided through Coastal Community Bank, Member FDIC — but the customer relationship, the app, the brand? That's all HOOD. With 27.4 million funded customers and $314 billion in total platform assets as of February 2026, the addressable deposit opportunity here is enormous.

Then came the SpaceX plot twist. Reuters reported Monday that Morgan Stanley's E*Trade was in pole position to lead the retail allocation for SpaceX's anticipated IPO — potentially cutting Robinhood and SoFi (SOFI) out entirely. SpaceX is targeting a $75 billion raise at a rumored $1.75 trillion valuation, with up to 30% reserved for retail investors. That's three times the typical retail allocation. Being sidelined from that would sting. HOOD dropped roughly 2% on the Reuters report. Then Elon Musk posted four words on X this morning: "These reports are false." Shares reversed. Also worth noting: HOOD's March metrics showed equity notional volume at $196 billion, up from $194.4 billion in February, while crypto volume cooled to ~$16 billion from $25 billion the prior month — a mixed but steady report.

Like Steph Curry shaking off a bad first quarter, HOOD finished Tuesday looking just fine but still far under ATHs.

Takeaway: Robinhood's banking bet is scaling fast, the SpaceX IPO chaos resolved in HOOD's favor, and the platform's core metrics remain solid heading into Q2.

Bloomberg reported that Monzo is shutting down its US operations after years of failing to gain meaningful traction in the world's largest consumer banking market. The London-based neobank will stop onboarding new US customers, lay off approximately 50 US employees, and give existing customers until June to close their accounts. The email to US customers reportedly read: "We know this isn't the news you were hoping for, and we're really sorry."

Monzo, founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, is by any measure a UK fintech success story. It has 12.5 million personal banking customers at home, posted £1.2 billion in revenue and a £94.5 million net profit for the fiscal year ending 2025. But the US was a different story entirely. The company was denied a US banking license in 2021 and was forced to operate through a partnership with Ohio-based Sutton Bank — never fully owning the customer relationship the way it does in the UK. Without that license, building trust and scale in a market already crowded with Chime, SoFi, and a newly aggressive Robinhood Banking was always going to be an uphill battle.

This is the oldest story in global fintech: what crushes it in London does not automatically translate stateside. Revolut is still trying to figure it out. N26 pulled out of the US in 2022. The regulatory moat around US banking is genuinely brutal, and Monzo ran into it at full speed. The timing — landing the same day Robinhood announces $1.5B in deposits — makes the contrast almost cinematic.

Takeaway: The US neobank market is not a "build it and they'll come" situation — without a banking license and a clear distribution edge, even profitable, beloved fintechs get humbled.

Public, the New York-based investing platform that's raised over $400 million from Accel and Tiger Global since its 2019 founding, officially launched "Agents" today — making it the first brokerage to let retail investors build AI agents that autonomously monitor markets and execute trades based on natural language instructions. The product is rolling out to select members now, with a waitlist open.

The pitch is genuinely different from anything else in retail brokerage. Instead of tapping buttons and entering limit orders, investors describe what they want: "If SPY drops more than 1% in the first 30 minutes, buy same-day call and put options." The Agent maps it out, asks clarifying questions, confirms the logic, and executes. Covered call strategies, cash sweeps, risk management triggers — all automatable. Co-CEO Jannick Malling framed it as shifting from "manual clicks to expressing intent." Agents operate entirely within Public's financial-grade infrastructure and won't execute outside an authenticated environment — no rogue bots.

This is the agentic AI moment hitting retail brokerage in real time. While Robinhood and Schwab are still building out their AI chat features, Public just skipped straight to autonomous execution. It's the difference between asking Siri for directions and Tesla's Autopilot actually driving. For a platform competing against players with 10x the user base, this is exactly the kind of product bet that reshapes a category.

Takeaway: Public just set a new baseline for what a retail brokerage can be — if agentic investing catches on, every platform from HOOD to Schwab will be playing catch-up.

Robinhood is building a real bank while dodging SpaceX drama, Monzo learned that US fintech isn't a study abroad program, and Public just handed retail investors an AI co-pilot that actually trades.

If today's edition hit different, do us a solid — forward it to one person in your group chat who still thinks fintech is boring. Subscribe to Fintech Stacks for your daily signal, follow my trades in real time on Robinhood Social, and catch the extended breakdown on our podcast and YouTube. The robots are running portfolios now. You should probably be paying attention.

Disclaimer: This content is for information and entertainment only and is not investment advice. I may or may not hold positions in some of the companies mentioned. Assume I at least own a fintech hoodie and a bunch of debit cards.