Alphabet Reduces Stakes in Robinhood, Duolingo and 23andMe

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has sold off portions of its shares in several publicly traded companies.

Among them are the trading platform Robinhood, in which Alphabet sold more than 4.3 million shares, or 90% of its stake in the FinTech, in the period ended June 30, CNBC reported Friday (Aug. 3), citing an Alphabet filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Alphabet retained 612,000 shares of Robinhood as of the time of the filing, according to the report.

The Google parent also significantly reduced its holdings of two other firms, selling 523,000 shares of Duolingo and 6.7 million shares of 23andMe, the report said.

Alphabet’s stake in Robinhood reportedly dates back to when Robinhood was an unlisted startup, Reuters reported Friday.

At the end of 2021, Alphabet held about 4.9 million shares worth about $419 million when they peaked in August 2021, shortly after Robinhood’s initial public offering (IPO), according to the report. The value of those shares has dropped 86% from that peak as of Thursday, the report said.

Robinhood reported Wednesday (Aug. 2) that it had just achieved its first profitable quarter since its IPO.

Still, shares of the company were trading down after hours that day on other news from the financial services firm’s second-quarter earnings report, PYMNTS reported at the time.

The earnings report showed that Robinhood has seen its crypto-based revenues slide to $31 million this quarter, alongside smaller decreases in equities and options trading, and that the firm shed 3.2 million monthly active users compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Total accounts, however, were up by 70,000 compared to the previous quarter, and up by 310,000 year over year.

Google’s most recent earnings results, released July 25, beat Wall Street expectations by a considerable margin.

The achievement underscored the positive impact generative artificial intelligence (AI) is having on the bottom line, with the evolving ecosystem supercharging its total addressable market (TAM), PYMNTS reported at the time.

Google mentioned AI more than 70 times during this quarter’s earnings call after having referred to the technology 55 times in the previous quarter’s call.

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