Public announces $135M Series D-2 capital raise

In September, Public celebrated its five-year anniversary, and it’s been nearly four years since our Series D. Today, we’re excited to announce new financing totaling $135 million, including $105 million in equity financing and $30 million in debt.

This round was once again led by Accel, which has led or co-led every funding round since we launched in 2019. We’re incredibly grateful to have a partner who believes in Public’s vision as much as we do.

Since our last funding round, our platform and company have matured significantly.

• What started out as a “social stock trading app” in 2019 has now become a powerful investing platform offering 5 different asset-classes, deep fundamental research tools, and sophisticated portfolio management.
• AI is now better at providing many of the benefits that our social features used to provide. Our embedded AI research agent Alpha is used by 90%+ of members, who now receive real-time context about what is happening in the markets. We see that 25% of Alpha conversations result in a trade within 3 hours.
• Our business attracts billions in deposits annually, and most customers are consolidating their investments with Public, making our platform their primary portfolio.
• Our core brokerage business is profitable, with over 10 significant revenue streams. We’re continuing to expand the platform with more asset classes, account types, and AI-powered features that help investors build their portfolios and understand the markets.

The opportunity ahead is clear

By 2045, $70T of assets will be inherited by a generation of digital natives — with $28T of that in the form of stocks and bonds.

That, combined with this generation’s income growth, will make it the richest in history.

This generation is also “self-directed first,” which means they are the most autonomous when it comes to investing. They started building financial literacy earlier than prior generations, giving them the confidence to control their portfolios and devise their own investment strategies. As this headline from the New York Times sums up nicely — the last thing they want is to speak with a human financial advisor.

Compounding the business

As we’ve scaled AUM into the billions over the past few years, we’ve found that the time required to double AUM continues to shrink, now taking less than a year. This is driven by having very little churn, customer lifetimes measured in decades, and by each new customer cohort depositing more than the last. We’re seeing an increasing share of wallet from both new and existing customers, who are consolidating their assets onto the platform and making Public their primary portfolio.

As we continuously expand products and asset classes on our platform, the gross profit per user continuously grows as well — this has happened every quarter for the past three years.

Move fast, don’t break things.

We ship improvements daily and launch at least one major new product every month.

However, product velocity is meaningless without reliability; it’s not just about how much you ship but how well it works. We’re especially proud that, over the past twelve months, the Public platform has had only 30 minutes of cumulative downtime. To put that in perspective, the top five incumbent brokerages experience, on average, two incidents every trading day.

A mission with the right intent

The US public markets have been the greatest wealth-creation machine in human history. The more Americans can make this machine work for them, the better we’ll do as a society. Investing is a forcing function for looking objectively at the economy and society at large.

Contrary to popular belief, the key is not simply to ensure as many people as possible participate; it’s about ensuring that the people who do participate have the best chance to be successful. Results matter, and building products with the right purpose in mind makes the difference between intentionally compounding wealth, and placing a mindless bet.

Across equities, bonds, and alternative assets like crypto — there are endless opportunities to grow your wealth. However, not everyone has the tools or context to take advantage of them.

Public exists to give people every opportunity to grow their wealth, and we’re excited to keep building the platform that truly helps make it happen.

Leif & Jannick
– Co-founders & Co-CEOs, Public